SNP First Minister Humza Yousaf has sparked fury after his two-minute speech marking Holocaust Memorial Day failed to mention Hitler’s extermination of Jews.
Despite saying “it has never been more important to remember the victims of the Holocaust”, the First Minister has been blasted for refusing to mention the “J-word” in his video.
Mr Yousaf only referred to the “millions of lives cut short, with the utmost cruelty and brutality”.
Later in the video, he was seen lighting a candle for Holocaust Memorial Day, narrating that he was doing so “in solidarity with every person affected by the Holocaust”.
While many different minorities and political opponents were exterminated in Adolf Hitler’s genocide, Jews made up the plurality with six million deaths.
Many picked up on the First Minister’s failure to mention the Jews in his video, with historian and BBC presenter Sir Simon Schama calling it “staggeringly offensive”.
Sir Simon said the First Minister was “pathetically terrified of using the J-word”.
He said: “Not enough that millions of our people perished; now we’ve been subjected to a second disappearance – exactly what the Reich had in mind.”
The speech also gained criticism from the other side of the globe, with Australian political activist Drew Pavlou condemning the “complete and total bulls**t to refuse to mention Jews once in your Holocaust memorial statement”.
He said: “Six million Jews were murdered simply because they were Jews but if you listened to Humza’s statement you wouldn’t even know it.”
He accused the First Minister of stripping the Holocaust of all its “context and historical background”, turning it into a “stand-in for supernatural evil that passed into the world and passed out of it roughly between the years 1939 and 1945 – nobody asked any questions about who was targeted and why.”
Another historian and television presenter, Simon Montefiore, joined the onslaught of criticism, describing Mr Yousaf’s video as “laughable humbug”.
He described the speech as a guide of “how to parade your solemn righteousness by remembering Holocaust Day – without mentioning the Jewish people”.
Another, Australian news anchor Rita Panahi, asked Mr Yousaf: “Did you forget a word or two? Jews? Jewish? How the hell do you release a statement about Holocaust Memorial Day without mentioning Jews?”
This morning the SNP First Minister is also under fire for refusing to cease Scottish funding for the UN refugee agency UNRWA, after Isreal revealed some of its staff were personally involved in the 7 October terrorist attack.
A swathe of major democracies have already suspended funding for the agency, including Britain, Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States.
Mr Yousaf has made clear the Scottish Government will not continue funding the UNRWA, despite concerns, pledging to continue providing them with “as much as we can”.
In response, the Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross said pausing support would be “the responsible and right thing for Humza Yousaf to do”.
Minister and Scottish MP Andrew Bowie tweeted: “Countries that announced they have temporarily suspended funding UNRWA as potential links to terrorists are investigated – USA, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Japan, Canada, Australia, Italy, Finland, Iceland and Estonia, so far”.
“But Humza Yousaf knows better.”
