FORMER first minister Humza Yousaf has described the “difficult” conversation he had with his wife around potential repercussions from Hamas against his family after condemning the terror attacks.
The SNP MSP was recently a guest on the A Muslim & A Jew Go There podcast where he spoke at length about the conversations he had with his wife, Nadia El-Nakla, on the morning of the October 7 attacks.
Hosts Sayeeda Warsi and David Baddiel asked Yousaf if he thought about the impact his statement condemning Hamas would have on his mother and father-in-law who were living in Gaza at the time.
Yousaf spoke about how on the day of the attacks he woke up and his wife’s phone had 27 notifications from his mother-in-law and quickly realised something was wrong.
He then spoke about how his mother-in-law knew there had been an attack and had watched missiles fire from Gaza into Israel but, due to a media blackout, didn’t know what was going on.
He said: “Nadia and I knew from that moment that if we didn’t get the parents out within the next 24 hours there was no way they were going to get out for, as it transpired, for weeks.
“We knew that the retaliation from Israel would be beyond anything we'd ever seen.”
The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of more than 1100 people and has seen 70% of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed while the Palestinian death toll is more than 37,000.
Yousaf went on to add: “[That was] the reason why I didn’t publicly do any news bids in the media broadcast for the first 24 hours, although there was no doubt I was always going to condemn Hamas. How could you not condemn Hamas given the brutality of the terror attack they committed?
“I had to speak with Nadia honestly and get her at least understanding that the moment I condemn Hamas, there is a possibility that Hamas were going to take reprisal and retaliation against her mother and her father.
“Hamas, as we know and this is the understatement of the century, are not good people,” he continued.
“Hamas will take revenge where they need to take revenge. And for a pretty high-profile Muslim to unequivocally condemn them and their attack, the way that they would get their revenge could well have been to take that revenge upon my mother-in-law and father-in-law.
“I just had to speak to Nadia for 24 hours to say look I’m going to come out and say this, I’ve got to, and you understand the reasons why and she did. We have to go eyes wide open and know there could be repercussions to that.”
“And that was probably one of the most difficult conversations that she and I have had.”
In a speech at Holyrood yesterday, June 26, Yousaf urged Keir Starmer to act quickly to recognise Palestine as a state.
He went on to say Labour would be guilty of a “betrayal” if they failed to do so after winning the General Election.
