THE head of the Scottish Government is married to a Palestinian woman whose parents left Scotland a few weeks ago to visit her mother in Gaza. Her brother is a Palestinian doctor living in Gaza with four kids, including a two-month-old baby who is probably dead by now. Speaking at the conference of the ruling party, Mrs. Yousaf says her family has said goodbye to each as they wait to die.

Mrs. Yousaf says the people of Gaza are saying goodbye to each other and just waiting to die. She said that Israel is simply killing people wantonly. If you are the faint-hearted type, do not read Mrs. Yousaf’s presentation to the conference of the ruling party of Scotland.

Politics is a strange force. Mrs. Yousaf’s husband is one of the top rulers in the UK since the UK’s union is Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland. The First Minister of Scotland and Wales are very important policy-makers. Yet in her speech, Mrs. Yousaf chastised the British Government for sending a spy plane to Israel rather than assistance to Gaza.
Why I say politics is strange because the West is always lecturing the Third World on inclusive democracy, but why is the voice of Scotland not included in the policy output of the UK government? Why Scotland has no say about sending assistance to Gaza. Isn’t the First Minister of Scotland a decisive force in the implementation of policies in the UK?
What is taking place in Gaza may exceed some of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime against the Jews. What the Nazis did is that they rounded up entire villages of people and put them on a train to go to their death. The form it is taking in Gaza is that people are not travelling to their death; they are simply waiting to die as the bombs drop on them because they have nowhere to run.

But even in Nazi Germany, the Jews had a safety valve. The partisans in all the European countries would attack many of the trains and free the occupants. There are no partisans in Gaza shooting down the Israeli planes. There is no army in Gaza, so there is no army protecting the civilian population.
I want to quote extracts of what Mrs. Yousaf said, but I think some people may be depressed at her description. Again I say politics is a strange thing. If after the horrors Mrs. Yousaf described in Gaza, why does she not press the First Minister of Scotland to request arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the Israeli Prime Minister and the chairman of the armed forces of Israel?

Mrs. Yousaf painted a picture of war crimes in Gaza. Her stories brought tears to countless people in the room when she was speaking. Her husband, the First Minister, cried too. Why then would Scotland not do it? I am not a student of international law, so I don’t know if only countries can request warrants from the ICC. Scotland of course, is not a country. If Scotland or Amnesty International or Doctors Without Borders can request the ICC to arrest members of the Israeli Cabinet for war crimes, then it should be done ASAP.
Now it is interesting to note what the moderator of the CBS interview programme, “Face the Nation”, Margaret Brennan, asked President Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. She enquired if destroying the infrastructural system of food, water and electricity in Gaza does not constitute a war crime.

Now that is CBS, a strong supporter of Israel when the bombing of Gaza began. Now Jack Tapper, an anchor at CNN pressed Sullivan on the issue of water, electricity and food and in fact embarrassed him by quoting the American condemnation of Russia doing the same in Ukraine. Tapper told Sullivan “But you’re not telling the Israelis to let the Palestinian hospitals have power.”

Yesterday, I wrote that the Western media was flooding the world with pro-Israeli reporting but the war crimes in Gaza are opening the eyes of the Western media. They know war crimes have taken place in Gaza and are continuing. There is no way, people like Brennan and Tapper, without an ounce of sympathy for the Palestinians, would have put those questions to Sullivan if they were not aware of the terror the daily bombing is causing in Gaza. I would urge readers to pay special attention to Tapper’s question to Sullivan, I repeat it; “But you’re not telling the Israelis to let the Palestinian hospitals have power.” This is the very US that tells the world it is the leader of the free world. In philosophy, there is a methodology named deconstruction. I will deconstruct the word, “free” in another column.