In her long career as a diplomat representing the State of Israel, Daniela Grudsky surely never anticipated that her most controversial act would be a meeting with the external affairs minister of a sub-state legislature.

And yet the furore that has followed her exchange with Angus Robertson has been nothing short of extraordinary and, indeed, without precedent.

Former First Minister Humza Yousaf said the meeting had caused “anger and upset” within the SNP, while former SNP MP Amy Callaghan said many nationalists were feeling “let down” by Robertson.

The crisis became so severe that the current SNP leader, John Swinney, was forced to hold an emergency meeting with nationalist membership groups to head-off a wider rebellion.

The outcome of this internal SNP wrangling is a significant change in Scottish Government policy.

Swinney’s devolved administration has now been forced into the drastic step of effectively cutting diplomatic ties with the State of Israel – the impact of which is only marginally diminished by the fact such ties never really officially existed in the first place.

Whatever your views on the current situation in the Gaza Strip, or the Israel-Palestine conflict more broadly, this response by the SNP........

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