While many of us will be looking forward to the election of a new depute leader at SNP conference this week, it is not the only topic of debate.

Following last year's launch of SNP Friends of Palestine, this year sees the launch of SNP Friends of a Two-State Solution, a group which, while explicitly cross-community and open to all, is expected to be more sympathetic to Israel.

In many ways it is a surprise that it took so long for such an organisation to appear at SNP conference. When the party had its first burst of success in the late 1960s, the backdrop of the Six-Day War and the self-reliance of the young Israeli state would have been attractive to many SNP members. Indeed Winnie Ewing's autobiography speaks explicitly of the inspiration for Scotland she saw in Israel, and recounts a holiday spent there, meeting then Prime Minister Menachem Begin and travelling to see tourist sites in his limousine.

And while it is not difficult to find SNP members who express sympathies for the Israeli viewpoint, broader generational attitudes have shifted within the party as well.

In many ways the launch last year of SNP Friends of Palestine was overdue too. There had been for many years in the party a growing sense that for Scotland's right to self-determination to mean anything in a global context, it should also apply to the Palestinians. I was proud to be a founding member, and also to be the first MP sworn in at Westminster with a Palestinian flag on my lapel.

At a Palestine fringe event at conference last year, I mentioned in my remarks that SNP Friends of Palestine was a great opportunity not only to further the cause of the Palestinian people in Scotland, and utilise the growth in SNP parliamentarians at Westminster and Holyrood, but also to set a positive example of what a modern Palestinian rights organisation should be. That is a vital responsibility as we seek to ensure that more European states follow the example of Sweden in recognising Palestine as a state, bringing us closer to the day when it can sit in the UN as a full member.

And while there have been many positives in the first year of SNP Friends of Palestine, I feel that I have to restate this sincere aim.

While the broad generational change in attitudes to the Israel/Palestine question since the 1960s and 70s has seen an increase in sympathy for the Palestinian cause as evidence of widespread Israeli government human rights abuses and disregard for international law has emerged, it seems many Palestinian rights activists have been unable to move with the times.

The conflation of this terrible and enduring conflict with a whole plethora of issues on the "anti-imperialist" left is not only unhelpful to the Palestinian cause, it is inimical to finding a solution to the suffering of the Palestinian people.

At its worst, it has seen those with repugnant views seek common cause with the movement, allowing naked anti-Semitism to emerge in its vilest form. It is this thinking that allows some pro-Palestinian activists to talk about their "friends" in Hamas, or to tolerate discrimination against Jewish people.

These worst excesses have not been seen in SNP Friends of Palestine but we must be constantly vigilant. Most anti-Semitism is not overt, relying on ancient tropes which are easily recycled into the modern age of memes and viral media, seeking to make common cause with otherwise noble views.

Let there be no doubt: being Pro-Palestinian does not automatically make me anti-anything, and prejudice of any sort, whether unintended or not, cannot be tolerated. Any peace in the Holy Land requires the approval of Israeli public opinion via the ballot box and we would do well to remember that.

There is a liberal, progressive case for Palestinian statehood that is there to be embraced and won. And just as Israel's actions are losing it support among its natural allies, we must allow a full, inclusive debate on Israel and Palestine, not one that sees any groups denigrated because of their assumed sympathies.

We in the SNP have an opportunity to be different. The conference will open with the results of a depute leadership campaign which has taken place in an atmosphere of civility, something which mirrors the conduct of other debates in the past.

It is in this spirit that I will go and show my support at the SNP Friends of a Two-State Solution stall on Thursday morning, as will many of my fellow SNP members. Doing so I'll be following the words of our leader Nicola Sturgeon, who said last year that, regardless of the rights and wrong of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it cannot be used "as some kind of justification for attacks on Jewish people, or abuse towards Jewish people, or Jewish people in any way being made to feel responsible for the actions people are disagreeing with. That's a point that has to be made at every level of Scottish society very, very strongly".

The Scotland we live in is outward-looking and does not shy away from debate. We owe it to ourselves to make sure that outward-looking debate takes place in the correct manner, with an eye on the prize of an enduring peace.

Stewart McDonald is the MP for Glasgow South.