“WHOEVER stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.” These were the words written on a whiteboard in a hospital in Gaza.

The doctor who wrote them, Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila of Médecins Sans Frontières, was killed alongside two of his colleagues by an Israeli air strike, while trying to save lives. The doctors working in Gaza are heroes. They are working in one of the most dangerous conflict zones in the world, putting their lives on the line every moment of every day in the full knowledge of the extreme danger they face.

They are doing so without the medicine or the equipment they need and without any idea of when the bombing around them will stop.

The hospitals they work in are supposed to be places to heal injuries and support wounded or vulnerable people, or even to bring new life into the world. They should never be the sites of massacres.

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There have been far too many deaths over the last 12 months. Far too many lives have been taken, but the simple and stark humanity of the handwritten message is a powerful reminder of the grotesque inhumanity that has been unleashed.

It has been a year since the horrific killings of October 7. Those deaths, and the terror faced by the people who were taken as hostages, were not only a terrible tragedy; they became a catalyst for some of the most appalling atrocities and worst war crimes of the 21st century.

We don’t know the true scale of the devastation that has been inflicted on Gaza, or of the humanitarian crisis it has fuelled. The collapse of the health system, the lack of basic media access and accountability, and the streets of homes and buildings turned into rubble mean that we likely never will.

The official tally of lives directly lost measures more than 40,000. Public health experts looking at the total death toll put the figure in the hundreds of thousands.

What we do know is that the humanitarian cost has been utterly horrific. Both the consequences of the war, and the brutal way in which it has been waged, have shown a total disregard for human life.

The prolonged nature of the assault, and the lack of any legal consequences for such destruction, are a moral scar on every government that has stood back and allowed it to happen.

The intensification and the escalation we have seen over recent days and weeks have been chilling to witness. The expansion of the war into Lebanon, the ground invasion underway as well as Iran’s response, should be a cause of very profound and deep concern for all of us.

The global community’s total failure to address Israel’s impunity, protect civilians or prevent war crimes has made the escalation inevitable and expanded the horrors into what could well become a full-scale regional conflict.

Some governments have been a lot more complicit than others. The UK Government, for example, has armed and supported Israeli forces every step of the way, only curbing a small number of arms licences due to warnings from lawyers.

The Scottish Government has taken a far more humane approach, with then first minister, Humza Yousaf standing out among European leaders as one of the strongest critics of Israel’s war. John Swinney has continued to back calls for a ceasefire and statehood for Palestine, but there are other steps that he can and must take.

The Greens have repeatedly raised the shocking track record of the Scottish Government in giving grants to the companies that are producing Israel’s weapons and are profiting from the killing.

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It is a disgrace that even as the Scottish Government have condemned the bombs being dropped on Gaza, they have also provided hundreds of thousands of pounds to the companies that are producing them via their business unit, Scottish Enterprise.

Both the First Minister and his predecessor repeatedly defended this by saying the Government doesn’t fund the manufacture of munitions, but this is not the point – the Government is funding the companies that profit from these atrocities. These are not small companies in need of funding, they are some of the biggest arms producers in the world.

During the last parliamentary session my Scottish Green colleague, Ross Greer, secured a commitment that Scottish Enterprise would apply human rights checks when making grants. But surely any check that would allow money to go to a company profiting from genocide is not worth the paper it is printed on?

I have no doubt that over the years to come all governments and politicians will be judged by what we did and didn’t do in the face of genocide. The UK has already failed the moral test, offering up political and military support for atrocities that have ended tens of thousands of lives.

I hope that the Scottish Government can tell a different story and that we can stand with the international peace movement and support the growing calls for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions to achieve both an immediate ceasefire and the end of the occupation.

If we are to see lasting change then it is crucial that we see concerted pressure from the international community, for justice, for peace, and for Palestine’s statehood.

I want Scotland to do everything it can to push for that.