In 1945 Allied forces advancing from both East and West smashed their way into Germany.

In that final chapter of the Second World War, until Germany surrendered in May 1945, hundreds of thousands of Germans died. Many were soldiers but a large number were civilians killed as the armies fought each other or in bombing raids by Allied Air Forces. Others died of disease which always accompanies war as basic services such as healthcare and clean water supply collapse.

After the fighting was over, the Allies partitioned Germany, ran it like a colony for a period and imposed a new constitution before leaving, some quicker than others.

In all this we had no quarrel with the people of Germany as a whole nor the vast bulk of the Germans who died through our action.

What we did was not genocide. Nor do we look back and say what we did was wrong. We took these actions because Germany had been captured by an evil regime, the National Socialists.

This regime, which did not bother with such things as elections, turned Germany into a militarily powerful but rogue state. It attacked its neighbours and did embark on genocide both inside and outside its own borders.

Nazi Germany had to be stopped, those running it removed and a new democratic and peaceful Germany enabled in its place.

In the Middle East today Israel stands alone as a democracy though its actual governance is a sobering reminder of the perils of proportional representation as an electoral system as the mainstream parties are held to ransom by nutcases as they try to form a government.

Is Israel perfect? No, it is not. Tragically the bullied have become the bullies. UN resolutions are flouted, Palestinian land is stolen, their rights denied, their hopes ignored and their economy crippled.

There is much to criticise Israel for and, worse, their current actions run the significant likelihood of ratcheting up hatred and conflict for decades to come, to the advantage of nobody.

Precisely what though would we have done if an organisation which controlled an undemocratic neighbouring state, which had as one of its core objectives the complete eradication of Scotland, had suddenly attacked us, brutally killed thousands of our citizens and carried off hundreds more into captivity?

Would we have done something? Would we feel we had the right to strike back? Would we want to rescue our citizens? Would we want to take action which reduced the capacity of the organisation which had attacked us to strike again? I rather suspect we would have done all those things.

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Which brings me to the Scottish Government and the SNP. These see no problem in, literally, hugging Palestinians and sitting down with leaders such as President Erdogan of Turkey whose commitment to a fully democratic and open society is a great deal less than Israel’s.

What they do see as terrible problems is when two of their own dare to say or do things which are not quite “on message”.

Chris Mason is an SNP MSP. He is not on the progressive wing of that party and holds views which are rooted in old school Christianity. A bit of a maverick, for which the Scottish Parliament is all the better. He dared to make the point that had Israel been bent on genocide when it invaded Gaza it would have killed many more Palestinians than it has. His words were clumsy but he spoke the truth. His reward has been to have a whip removed and with no sense of irony a spokesman for the SNP said “there can be no room in the SNP for this kind of intolerance”. Wow: pot, kettle, black.

Angus Robertson is another SNP MSP. I think it is fair to say he and I would agree on virtually nothing and I believe most of his actions to be a misguided waste of time. Today though my heart warms to him. His crime is to have met a representative of the democratically elected Israeli Government. Without meeting and talking to people with whom you profoundly disagree how can compromise and change for the better ever be achieved?

(Image: Palestinians evacuate from a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip,)

For his crime of having this meeting, poor old Angus has been the victim of an outbreak of mass hysteria from his own party and calls for his removal. He has been forced, North Korea-style, to issue an apology for his “mistake”.

The Scottish Government and SNP must grow up. The political and humanitarian problems in the Middle East are complex and deep seated. To say that one party is wholly right and the other so wholly wrong that you want nothing to do with them is not just ignorant and childish but does nothing to solve the problem. If Scotland wants to bring its small influence to bear, it must acknowledge the situation is not clear cut and be prepared to talk, and listen, to both sides.