Yousaf’s deep humanity and leadership is worthy of recognition

This alone would have lent visual ­pathos to Humza Yousaf’s decision to attend a ­service of solidarity at Giffnock Synagogue last week. To do so against the backdrop of the moral jeopardy his own family is ­facing in Gaza only heightens its impact. The ­personal is political – and justly so. The ­suggestion it is self-indulgent for the First Minister to spotlight this shows just far it is possible to fall down the apparently ­bottomless abyss of partisanship and lack of empathy.

Understanding his formative years are essential to understanding the uncommon empathy and moral clarity he has been able to demonstrate in recent days. Since he’s been a teenager, Humza Yousaf has been ­confronted with the human face of both sides of this interminable – seemingly ­intractable – conflict in the Middle East.

Since he was elected, folk have often alluded to Humza Yousaf’s schooling at Hutchesons’ Grammar. These allusions have generally been to paint him as a gilded political princeling, handmaidened into the party of government as a young man and reaching the top of the SNP through ­internal party machinations, benefiting from the client relationships between ­established politicians and their elves and sprites – party advisers and staffers – all the main political parties in the UK show signs of being subject to. At this stage, ­whoever you vote for, the political question is ­usually which kind of careerist you prefer.

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Hutchie is also a private school – and there’s nothing which makes leftists squirm more reliably than bringing up the fact they’ve been the beneficiaries of selective education.

In contrast with England, Scottish ­politics still enjoys a round or two of prolier than thou if the opportunity arises – and a privately educated First Minister who talks about ­social and economic justice is just too great a temptation for people who think any private schoolboy who doesn’t grow up to be a loyal Tory is some kind of class traitor.

But unless you were there at the time – as I was – you might not appreciate just how powerfully the politics and ­injustices of the Middle East resonated in Hutchesons’ Grammar during Yousaf’s formative years there.

Last week, I think you saw the real ­human impact of the lessons he learned. It is immensely to his credit.

The school had significant Jewish and Muslim communities. They were his schoolmates and mine. If a bus bomb went off in Tel Aviv, it rocked the ­corridors. If airstrikes brought down a ­civilian block on the West Bank, it wasn’t just ­broadcast on the nightly news – you felt it in the classroom. The politics and conflicts of the Middle East were not ­abstract or ­academic. I’ve no personal connection to the region – but thanks to my ­schoolmates, these issues wore ­ human faces.

On reflection, the vehemence of our ­discussions of the rights and many wrongs of the conflict bred two things in me: a profound sense and respect for the conflict’s moral and emotional impact on people here, and a profound reluctance to talk about it myself, for fear of getting it wrong, understanding what it meant to people.

I value this insight into the human ­impact even now. Particularly now.

As the writer Hugo Rifkind tweeted, “they might not be talking about it, but every British Jew I know is deep in WhatsApp groups, checking on gap-year kids, cousins, second cousins, ­nieces, nephews. Regardless of their politics, their views on Israel, or whether or not they’ve ever even been there”. Palestinian angst is now its mirror.

This is what the First Minister was ­alluding to when he said in Giffnock ­Synagogue that “many of you know I was brought up in this ­community, with Jewish neighbours most of my life. We shared culture, traditions and even food – I still miss receiving my batch of Sufganiyot during Hannukah”.

Humza Yousaf’s speech bears reading in full. I’ll share just the introduction: “Friends, I stand here today not just as First Minister, but first and foremost as a fellow human being. A father, a son, a ­son-in-law, a husband. It is with deep ­sorrow that I join you this evening. I want you to know that this First Minister, who is proudly Muslim, shares the pain of our Jewish communities. Your heartbreak is my heartbreak. Your loss is my loss. Your tears are my tears.”

The invocations of the Almighty might leave the atheists among you cold, but the underlying message should not. I tend to think that in this life there is only ­human justice and human injustice. We’re the only ones capable of unbalancing or rebalancing the scales. We can choose to plant trees or burn down the garden. The capacity for inhumanity is all too human.

Describing human horrors as ­“animalistic”, as several politicians have done over the past week, is a moral ­evasion. We can’t devolve our special ­capacity for hard hearts and indifference on to nature.

Dehumanising others is something which comes disturbingly naturally to us. We don’t see in others the humanity we so urgently require others to recognise in ourselves. And it seems, above everything else, to be a failure of perhaps of the most potent, positive and generative of human faculties – our imaginations.

Experience shows us that social ­proximity can make all the difference to how we think and feel – and if you don’t know anyone of a different religion, have never made friends outside your ethnic group or beyond the narrow frontiers of your own sexual preferences.

FOR decades, the British political class has shown a disturbing enthusiasm for proxy wars. Doubters and backsliders have been reliably monstered by the national media, smeared as “objectively pro” tyrants and murderers for their less than full-throated support for launching rockets into civilian convoys or carpet-bombing our way to peace in some new and unfortunate corner of the Middle East or North Africa. “Chocks away!” is the cheapest political slogan in the world.

In conditioning their responses, it might help if British politicians realised that nobody in Gaza cares what you or I think about their situation. Both Hamas and the Israeli government will do what they do – whatever backbench MPs or MSPs do or do not post on social media.

A fictional diet of the West Wing and the presidency of Barack Obama has taught too many modern politicians the bad lesson that the solution to intractable conflicts is to give a good speech. But sometimes, what you say and where you say it really matters.

It is a sad indictment of our politics that not being a dead-eyed sociopath parlaying a tragic conflict into domestic political point-scoring ranks as a moral achievement. But right now – it is. When he won out in the surprise SNP leadership race, I have to admit I was one of those who was less than persuaded of Humza Yousaf’s capacity for the top job. I still have my doubts.

But last week, under the weight of ­profound personal anxiety and grief, ­confronted by all kinds of political and personal pressures, he’s comported ­himself with considerable dignity and ­resolve. He’s shown leadership and ­empathy when it matters. I know I can’t be alone in thinking more of him for it.