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Scottish media are reporting that the National Trust for Scotland has closed an exhibit at the The Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre of work by young people expressing sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people. NTS censorship of the testimonies is reported to have been based on some complaints against the airing of views supportive of the Palestinian people. These complaints aim to silence views opposed to the actions and policies of the State of Israel. We understand that the decision to censor came from NTS HQ in Edinburgh and not staff at the Bannockburn centre.

If this is true it is extremely disturbing that young people (and others) expressing their views on a matter of justice and opposition to human rights abuses have been told that they should not have done so. The exhibition dealt with the involvement of young people generally in current protest movements and included views on Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion and Palestine - only the materials on Palestine were removed.

It is essential that NTS supports the children's freedom of expression or specify the content that led to the removal of their work; otherwise the message to all of us is that any discussion of Palestinian human rights is in danger of being attacked and censored.

Has the NTS caved in to pressure from groups using vexatious complaints to smear and silence critics of the Israeli state? This can not be allowed to stand.

The pro-Israel complainers objected to well-attested points that "Israel had pushed out Arabic communities from their homes by force" and "has continued to impose institutionalised discrimination against Palestinians living in Israel".

We have recently seen major Israeli human rights group, BT’Selem, issue a report demonstrating that Israel is an apartheid state denying basic human rights to millions of Palestinians. Human Rights Watch reached the same conclusion a few weeks later. Four years earlier a key UN body, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) concluded that Israel had established an apartheid regime. The International Criminal Court defines apartheid as a "crime against humanity".

The ICC has opened an investigation into Israeli war crimes, a result Amnesty International has urged for many years. Israel is refusing to cooperate with the Court. Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen: “The shocking truth is that Israeli soldiers kill civilians in Gaza with near-total impunity, week in week out.” Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s researcher in Israel, "Water is a basic need and a right, but for many Palestinians obtaining even poor-quality, subsistence-level quantities of water has become a luxury that they can barely afford." Amnesty blamed the Israeli government and said Israeli soldiers often destroyed locally built wells.

NTS may not have heard of a self-explanatory report from Defence of Children International, Palestinian Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalised ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities.

The school-children who expressed sympathy for their Palestinian counterparts need to be encouraged and praised rather than have their efforts condemned.

I ask that NTS restores the exhibit without delay.  In addition, I ask that NTS apologise publicly to those who created the exhibition and to Palestinian communities - to those living in Scotland and to those who live under and endure on a daily basis Israel's illegal military occupation and apartheid system.