(Image: PA)
Former first minister Humza Yousaf said Palestinians’ right to exist was being ignored as an SNP MP accused the UK Government of failing to “actively” save lives in Gaza.
Lara Bird launched a furious attack on Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband over the UK Government’s response to the conflict, accusing ministers of failing to act sooner despite having information about the situation in Gaza.
Her comments came at an SNP conference fringe event in Aberdeen also addressed by Mr Yousaf and chaired by his wife, Nadia El-Nakla.
The Arbroath and Broughty Ferry MP said she was “angry” after listening to Mr Miliband set out plans to sanction Israel.
Ms Bird, a former barrister who previously worked for the Britain Palestine Project, said: “I am so angry that a few weeks ago I had to sit in the House of Commons and listen to Ed Miliband stand up with all the audacity that he had and pretend that the information that he was using to make the decision to sanction Israel was brand new information.
Lara Bird (Image: Robert Perry/PA)
“To pretend that there was nothing that the UK Government could have possibly done before this point.”
She added: “Be under no pretence, because Ed Miliband’s statement might show a small change in narrative from the UK Government, but this is not a government that is actively looking to save Palestinian lives.
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“Because if it was, it could have done that already. It could have taken action.”
Ms Bird vowed to continue putting pressure on the Foreign Secretary at Westminster, telling SNP members: “Have absolutely no doubt that when I’m in Westminster representing you, representing Arbroath and Broughty Ferry and representing the SNP, I will continue to be angry and I will use that anger.
“Ed Miliband has not heard the last of me.”
Mr Yousaf used his address to question why he was repeatedly asked whether Israel had a right to exist, arguing that the same question was not asked about Palestinians.
During his time as first minister, he revealed his in-laws were trapped in Gaza following the outbreak of war in October 2023.
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Mr Yousaf recently published Under Fire, his memoir, accounting the trauma of the experience he shared with wife, Ms El-Nakla.
“I say to journalists who have often asked me, and have over the last few weeks, ‘does Israel have the right to exist?’ I ask them: why do you never ask me if Palestinians have a right?” he said.
The former SNP leader also revealed that his wife’s grandmother, Jidda Hasna, had died aged 95 after spending 77 years displaced from her family home in Julis.
Mr Yousaf said his grandmother-in-law had eventually fled Gaza for Istanbul in Turkey in 2024 and had died without being afforded the “dignity” of being buried in her homeland.
He said: “Jidda Hasna, having over seven decades systematically having her rights stripped away from her, is the very personification of the Palestinian struggle.”
Mr Yousaf said his wife’s family had been forced to flee Palestine and become refugees for “crimes they did not commit”.
He added: “Gaza has become the cemetery beyond which international law died.”
Mr Yousaf also claimed more ammunition had fallen on Gaza “than the equivalent of six atomic bombs” and said the territory had “more child amputees than any other region or country in the world”.
But he told the packed fringe meeting that those campaigning over Gaza could not afford to lose hope.
“We must never lose that hope because the Palestinian people can’t afford for us to lose hope,” he said.
He added that Scotland had “time and time again” proven “we stand on the side of the oppressed”.