HUMZA Yousaf’s partner Nadia El-Nakla has said she is “pleading” with the UK Government to allow her to bring her brother to the UK from war-torn Gaza.
The SNP councillor also hit out at the media, saying that Israel was committing “textbook genocide in real time and it’s not even on the news”.
Speaking to the Guardian, El-Nakla said that her sister-in-law and her four children, who are aged between six months and nine years, had all escaped Gaza after help from the Turkish government. However her brother, an emergency room medic in the region, remains trapped.
After the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 in which some 1139 people were killed and 240 taken hostage, El-Nakla’s parents were unable to leave the Gaza strip. They had been in the region visiting family.
The First Minister made headlines with repeated calls to help his trapped in-laws – Elizabeth and Maged El-Nakla – before they were finally allowed to pass the Rafah border crossing into Egypt on the morning of Friday November 3.
However, El-Nakla’s brother and family, including an elderly grandparent, remained behind. On Thursday, she told the Guardian that Turkey had said they would accept her remaining family in Gaza as refugees.
In November, El-Nakla attended an international summit in Istanbul calling for a ceasefire in Gaza after being invited by Emine Erdogan, the first lady of Turkey.
She said that her sister-in-law and her four children had escaped to Turkey, where her parents (below) have flown to support her.
However, the family was forced to take the “horrible” decision to leave their 93-year-old grandmother in Gaza due to her care requirements – and El-Nakla’s brother also had to stay behind after his name was removed from the refugee list. El-Nakla said she presumed that had been done by Israel.
“I’m so grateful that they’re safe,” El-Nakla told the Guardian. “My brother keeps thanking me for saving his kids.”
She further said: “I feel like a second-class citizen in my own country, because I don’t have the right to bring my own brother to stay in my own home.
“I can see people across the street hosting Ukrainian families, and rightly so. But I can’t host my own brother, to me that feels beyond upsetting …
“I was born here. I pay my taxes. I contribute to society. And yet the government that’s supposed to represent me is doing such a poor job.”
El-Nakla hit out at the UK Government, saying it “does not care about Palestinians, no matter how many times they stand up in the chamber and give the rhetoric of ‘Palestinian lives matter’”.
She called for a UK resettlement scheme for Gazans, adding: “I’m genuinely having to plead for my family not to be killed or plead for my people not to be murdered. That doesn’t feel dignified.”
And she said of Keir Starmer, who is widely expected to win a 2024 General Election: “I understand that he is desperate to be the next prime minister, but these are really important points in politics where you have to make a decision [about] what side of history you’re going to stand on.”
The Home Office has been asked for comment.
