Dougie

There is something wonderfully moving about the multilingualism that’s emerged at the Holyrood swearing in ceremony. Scotland has been conceived of as a multilingual country ever since the Picts and the Scots first merged, and it always will be.

On This Day, May 14–15, 1974: The Ma’alot Massacre — Palestinian Terrorists Slaughter 22 Israeli Schoolchildren on Independence Day While Israelis were celebrating their country’s 26th Independence Day, three Palestinian terrorists from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine turned a school trip into a bloodbath. Disguised in Israeli army uniforms, they infiltrated from Lebanon and began their rampage in the immigrant town of Ma’alot. - They burst into the home of Fortuna and Yosef Cohen and murdered the entire family: the parents, their 4-year-old son Eliahu, and left their 5-year-old daughter Miriam wounded. Fortuna was seven months pregnant. - They shot a sanitation worker after asking him for directions to the school. - Then they stormed the Netiv Meir Elementary School, where 115 teenagers (mostly 15–16 years old from Safed) were sleeping after a field trip. The terrorists took the children hostage, wired the building with explosives, and demanded the release of 23 imprisoned terrorists. For over 12 hours the kids huddled on the floor in terror as the terrorists screamed threats and prepared to execute them. When the elite Sayeret Matkal unit finally stormed the school, the terrorists sprayed the classroom with automatic gunfire and hurled grenades directly at the children. 22 children were slaughtered. Another 3 adults died with them. 68 more were wounded. This was not “resistance.” This was the deliberate, sadistic targeting of Jewish children — on Israel’s Independence Day. This is what the Palestinian “resistance” has always been. Long before Hamas, long before October 7, 2023, Palestinian terror groups were slaughtering the most innocent among us: schoolkids, pregnant mothers, entire families. Ma’alot was not an outlier. It was the pattern — from the 1920s pogroms, through the Mufti’s Nazi alliance, through decades of plane hijackings, school bus ambushes, and suicide bombings. They have never wanted a state beside Israel. They have always wanted Israel gone — and Jewish children dead. Stop calling it “resistance.” Call it what it is: genocidal Jew-hatred with a new name. The Jewish people survived the Holocaust. We survived Ma’alot. We survived October 7. And we are still here — stronger than ever. Am Yisrael Chai. Never forget the children of Ma’alot. Never let anyone sanitize what “from the river to the sea” has always meant.

Here's the full list of languages MSPs spoke during their Holyrood oaths today 🚨 Arabic, BSL, Scots, Dundonian Scots, Doric, Gaelic, Shona, Mandarin, French, Dutch, Shaetlan, Orcadian, Polish, Hindi