On Saturday local time, the US announced that it had launched airstrikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran. This marks the first time the US has officially intervened militarily in this round of the Iran-Israel conflict, drawing widespread shock from the international community. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on social media that the move was “a dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge – and a direct threat to international peace and security.” China’s Foreign Ministry also strongly condemned the US attacks on Iran. US action, which seriously violates the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law, not only heightens tensions in the Middle East but also risks triggering a wider crisis.

Attacking nuclear facilities is extremely dangerous. Due to their unique nature, damage to such sites could lead to severe nuclear leaks, potentially resulting in humanitarian disasters and posing grave risks to regional safety. The tragic past lessons of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents already showed that the consequences of nuclear leaks don’t pose a threat to a single country – they impact neighboring nations and the global security environment.

By using “bunker-buster” bombs to “accomplish what Israel could not,” the US has deliberately escalated the level of weaponry used, pouring fuel on the flames of war and pushing the Iran-Israel conflict closer toward an uncontrollable state.

What the US bombs have impacted is the foundation of the international security order. By attacking nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Washington has set a dangerous precedent. This action, in essence, bypasses both the UN Security Council and the IAEA framework, attempting to unilaterally “resolve” the Iranian nuclear issue through force. This is a serious violation of the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law, as well as a rejection of the principled position of the international community, including China and the European Union, which has dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue through multilateral negotiations for many years. Washington’s boast of close cooperation with Israel “as a team” confirms its nature of dragging its ally against international morality and multilateralism.

For Iran, the strike is a blatant provocation. After responding that it “reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interests and people,” Tehran on Sunday launched the powerful Kheibar Shekan missile targeting Israel for the first time. According to media reports, Ismail Kowsari, a member of the National Security Commission of the Parliament in Iran, said the country’s parliament voted to approve the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council is expected to weigh in and make a final decision on the matter. Iran is located in the choke point of the Strait of Hormuz, which around one-fifth of the world’s total oil and gas consumption transits through. Once this channel is blocked by the war, international oil prices are bound to fluctuate dramatically, while global shipping security and economic stability will face serious challenges.

The US military’s “direct involvement” has further complicated and destabilized the Middle East situation, drawing more countries and innocent civilians into the conflict and forcing them to face a loss. Even the Associated Press called the airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities a “perilous decision,” while the New York Times warned that US military action against Iran would “bring risks at every turn.” What is also receiving a lot of attention is that due to US strike on Iran, Yemen’s Houthis announced it would resume attacks on US ships in the Red Sea. The region is already entangled in a complex web of sectarian divisions, proxy wars and external interventions. The facts show that US involvement is causing the Iran-Israel conflict to spill over. Within just one day, international investors rushed to sell off risk assets, and discussions of a “sixth Middle East war” surged across media platforms, reflecting the global community’s growing anxiety over the region’s spiraling instability.

China has consistently opposed the threat and abuse of using force. It advocates resolving crises through political and diplomatic means. In a recent phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward a “four-point proposal” regarding the Middle East situation: promoting a cease-fire and ending the hostilities is an urgent priority; ensuring the safety of civilians is of paramount importance; opening dialogue and negotiation is the fundamental way forward; and efforts by the international community to promote peace are indispensable. This proposal reflects China’s long-standing and farsighted security vision. History in the Middle East has repeatedly shown that external military intervention never brings peace – it only deepens regional hatred and trauma. The false logic behind US coercion by force runs counter to peace. Hopefully, the parties involved, especially Israel, will implement an immediate cease-fire, ensure the safety of civilians and open dialogue and negotiation to restore peace and stability in the region.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Global Times.

Local press freedom groups said those abducted between May 21 and 23 included:

• Abduljabbar Zayad, freelance photographer
• Hassan Ziyad, journalist with London-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed
• Abdulaziz Al-Noum, Director of the Soorah Media Production Center,
• Walid Ali Ghalib, deputy head of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate

On May 24, the Specialized Criminal Court in the capital Sanaa sentenced well-known Yemeni journalist Mohamed Al-Miyahi to 1½ years in prison for criticizing Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi online. Al-Miyahi was also ordered to sign a pledge not to resume his journalistic work and to pay a guarantee of 5 million riyals (US$20,500), which he would forfeit if he were to resume publication of material critical of the state.

“The kidnapping of at least four Yemeni journalists and media workers and the sentence issued against Mohamed Al-Miyahi exemplify the Houthis’ escalating assault on press freedom,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “We call on Houthi authorities to immediately release all detained journalists and stop weaponizing the law and courts to legitimize their repression of independent voices.”

The Iranian-backed rebels, who control Sanaa and govern more than 70% of Yemen’s population, have been fighting a Saudi-backed coalition since 2015. The group is designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Al-Miyahi criticized the Houthis in his last article prior to his September abduction and enforced disappearance for over a month. In January, he appeared in court, accused of “publishing articles against the state.” 

Al-Miyahi’s prosecution violates Article 13 of Yemen’s press law, which protects journalists from punishment for publishing their opinions, unless these are unlawful.

CPJ has criticized the establishment of parallel justice systems by non-state groups, like the Houthis, as they are widely seen as lacking impartiality.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Local press freedom groups said those abducted between May 21 and 23 included:

• Abduljabbar Zayad, freelance photographer
• Hassan Ziyad, journalist with London-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed
• Abdulaziz Al-Noum, Director of the Soorah Media Production Center,
• Walid Ali Ghalib, deputy head of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate

On May 24, the Specialized Criminal Court in the capital Sanaa sentenced well-known Yemeni journalist Mohamed Al-Miyahi to 1½ years in prison for criticizing Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi online. Al-Miyahi was also ordered to sign a pledge not to resume his journalistic work and to pay a guarantee of 5 million riyals (US$20,500), which he would forfeit if he were to resume publication of material critical of the state.

“The kidnapping of at least four Yemeni journalists and media workers and the sentence issued against Mohamed Al-Miyahi exemplify the Houthis’ escalating assault on press freedom,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “We call on Houthi authorities to immediately release all detained journalists and stop weaponizing the law and courts to legitimize their repression of independent voices.”

The Iranian-backed rebels, who control Sanaa and govern more than 70% of Yemen’s population, have been fighting a Saudi-backed coalition since 2015. The group is designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Al-Miyahi criticized the Houthis in his last article prior to his September abduction and enforced disappearance for over a month. In January, he appeared in court, accused of “publishing articles against the state.” 

Al-Miyahi’s prosecution violates Article 13 of Yemen’s press law, which protects journalists from punishment for publishing their opinions, unless these are unlawful.

CPJ has criticized the establishment of parallel justice systems by non-state groups, like the Houthis, as they are widely seen as lacking impartiality.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

[A] lot of people across the global majority are asking the extremely serious question: why the BRICS, and especially why Russia and China, are not doing more than what they’re doing on behalf of Palestine and to defend Palestine. This is an extremely serious question and it’s not being addressed by Russia and China. We have to be straightforward about that, right? The only ones who are actually doing something, once again, are the Houthis in Yemen. Heroes of the whole planet.

— Journalist and geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar in a Youtube interview with Danny Haiphong, streamed live on 17 July 2024 (approximately 18:16 to 18:54)

The sentiments expressed by Escobar were expressed to me at an earlier date by author Randy Shields:

… if all Russia and China are going to do is talk they could start talking about a one state solution. They could put some urgency into the situation. They could let Abbas and the Gulf family dictatorships know that the status quo is unacceptable. They could start telling the truth to the world that the “two state solution” is impossible and was only ever a delaying tactic by Israel. They could even announce that Palestine is under consideration for BRICS membership…. They could cut off whatever trade they have and cut off diplomatic relations with Israel, recall ambassadors, etc…

Godfree Roberts, author of Why China Leads the World gave his take on China and Palestine in his 1 May 2025, “Xi the Merciful?: The fate of China’s worst enemy lies in Xi Jinping’s hands”:

Beijing is hunting much bigger game than tariffs: the liberation of Palestine. China, Palestine’s oldest and most loyal friend, has endured America’s genocidal mania for generations and now has the tools to end their shared misery….

This year, we will witness the most momentous events since WWII. Global leadership will return to Asia, America will enters [sic] its post-imperial twilight, and Palestine will become free and independent, and the Zionists return to Ukraine whence they came.

Shields is skeptical:

There’s no evidence to back up what [Roberts] says. Russia and China continue to maintain trade and diplomatic ties with a genocidal apartheid state committing 24/7 live-streamed genocide.

China plays a long game. There is plenty of evidence of Chinese advancements in science, technology, supply chains, manufacturing, arts, etc. The question is whether China (and Russia) will come through with morally based support befitting a leading world economy?

The Communist Party of China (CPC) has made great strides for its people, having achieved a xiaokang (moderately prosperous) society in 2021. Moving forward, China aims for gongtong fuyu (common prosperity) — a society based on social equality and economic equity.

On the road to gongtong fuyu, the CPC’s next five-year plan targets “the goal of basically realizing socialist modernization, with a view to building a great country and advancing national rejuvenation” in the period 2026 to 2030. China’s rise is also meant to benefit the world as it seeks peaceful win-win relationships. Chairman Xi Jinping said, “Long ago China made a solemn declaration to the world that it is committed to pursuing peaceful development.”¹

This commitment to pursuing peaceful development has recently been thrown into question by China’s business arrangements connected to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which can hardly be construed as peaceful development from the Palestinian side (or any morally based side).

China’s Support for Palestine

China’s support for the human and territorial rights of Palestinians dates back to the time of chairman Mao Zedong. Mao’s China supported anti-imperialist and national liberation movements worldwide; this included support for the Palestinian cause. In May 1965, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was ensconced in a Beijing office and accorded diplomatic privileges and immunity. During a meeting with a visiting PLO delegation in 1965, Mao said: “Imperialism is afraid of China and of the Arabs. Israel and Formosa are bases of imperialism in Asia. You are the front gate of the great continent, and we are the rear.”²

Post-Mao, on 20 November 1988, China officially recognized the State of Palestine and established official diplomatic relations between the two countries. On 31 December of the same year, the PLO’s office in Beijing was upgraded to the Embassy of the State of Palestine in China, and its head was appointed as the ambassador of the State of Palestine to China.

However, China has a uneven history of supporting the Palestinian cause and opposing Zionism.³

More recently, at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 22 February 2024, Ma Xinmin, director-general of the Department of Treaty and Law of the Chinese Foreign Ministry “unequivocally stated”:

“The Palestinian-Israeli conflict stems from Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory and Israel’s longstanding oppression of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people fight against Israeli oppression and their struggle for completing the establishment of an independent state on the occupied territory are essentially just actions for restoring their legitimate rights.”⁴

Moreover,

Citing numerous articles of international laws, Ma claims that “the struggle waged by peoples for their liberation, right to self-determination, including armed struggle against colonialism, occupation, aggression, domination against foreign forces should not be considered terror acts” and that “armed struggle in this context is distinguished from acts of terrorism. It is grounded in international law. This distinction is acknowledged by several international conventions.” He further declares, “in pursuit of the right to self-determination, Palestinian people’s use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state is an inalienable right, well-founded in international law.”⁵

Regarding the deliberations by the ICJ on the charge of genocide being carried out by the state of Israel, China supports the ICJ’s role in upholding justice and international law, and calls for an immediate ceasefire in Palestine, humanitarian assistance, and a two-state solution to achieve lasting peace in the region.

On 14 April 2025, Times of India reported that Russia and China criticized Israel for turning humanitarian assistance to Gaza into “a tool of war.” Russia’s UN envoy Vasily Nebenzya alleged that Israel was attempting to make the UN an accomplice to its warring in Gaza. This sentiment was echoed by China’s envoy Fu Cong.

As Shields, and many others, would point out this is just more words.

What is China doing in Israeli Occupied Palestine?

But the situation vis-à-vis Palestine appears decidedly more sinister.

Razan Shawamreh is a Palestinian researcher interested in Chinese foreign policy in the Middle East. She has thrown a wrench into Chinese good intentions supporting Palestinian resistance and self-determination in its territories. Shawamreh wrote an article, “How China is quietly aiding Israel’s settlement enterprise,” for the Middle East Eye in which she charges, “Away from Beijing’s lofty rhetoric about defending Palestinians, Chinese firms are helping to sustain illegal settlements.” Despite China having supported the UN General Assembly resolution 3379 that defined Zionism as a “form of racism and racial discrimination” in 1975, Shawamreh provides numerous examples of Chinese support for Zionism.

• Adama Agricultural Solutions, a former Israeli company now fully owned by the Chinese state-run firm China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) is directly “linked to the militarised destruction of Palestinian livelihoods.”
• This is not an exception. Shawamreh writes, “In recent years, several state-owned Chinese companies, along with other private Chinese firms, have invested directly or indirectly in Israeli settlements or companies operating within them. Take the case of Tnuva, a major Israeli food producer that operates in illegal settlements. Despite international calls to boycott the company, China’s state-owned conglomerate Bright Food acquired a 56 percent stake in Tnuva in 2014. In 2021, Tnuva won a tender to operate 22 public transportation lines that serve 16 settlements in Mateh Yehuda – all built on occupied land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. These aren’t just buses; they’re infrastructure supporting colonial entrenchment, making settler life easier and more permanent.”

An earlier article by Shawamreh concluded, “China’s alleged impartiality serves to undermine Palestinian rights.”⁶

I have seen no official Chinese response to the reports of abetting the Israeli Jews’ dispossession of Palestinians. What did appear on 17 May 2025 was a Youtube video by global impulse, titled “The SHOCKING Truth Behind China’s Gaza Aid | 60,000 Families Saved,” which claimed, “But one thing is clear, China is no longer content to be a passive observer in Middle Eastern Affairs.” Two months earlier, The Indian Express showed a video that China had sent its first batch of 60,000 packages of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza via Jordan.

Can the guilt of colluding in the genocide and dispossession of indigenous Palestinians bring comfort to the Chinese soul through providing aid parcels?

Xi Jinping on Israel and Palestine

In a speech on 5 June 2014 chairman Xi Jinping spoke of “hundreds of years [of] peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning, and mutual benefit” between the Chinese and Arab peoples. “We will not forget the promise to support the cause of the Palestinian people that China made to the Arab states … at the Bandung Conference 60 years ago.”⁷ [Emphasis added]

Mao laid the foundation for the PRC in dealing with Palestinians. As part of a symposium to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Mao’s birth, Xi channelled Mao in a speech titled “Carry on the Enduring Spirit of Mao Zedong Thought”:

We stand for peaceful resolutions to international disputes, oppose all forms of hegemony and power politics, and never seek hegemonism nor engage in expansion.⁸

The Conscience of China

China is important. Its dedication to peaceful development and diplomacy is laudatory and in stark contrast to the bombastic hectoring and warring of the US-NATO block. China cares for the well-being of all its citizens; it seeks win-win relationships with other countries — not the win-lose entanglements of the capitalist West. As such China gives substance and believability to reifying that elusive, illusory, transient, teasing, wishful abstraction called hope — hope that all too often leads to bitter disappointment.

I have been disappointed before upon hearing of Chinese involvement in an unsavoury circumstance. A few years back, I came across an article that was scathing of a big Chinese tuna-fishing company, Dalian Ocean Fishing, for alleged maltreatment of foreign workers, workers who fell sick, died, suffered abuses, substandard food, excessive working hours, and withholding of pay.

I inquired about the situation and discovered it was a rogue private company that was selling its catch to a Japanese company, Mitsubishi. Nonetheless, that does not let China off the hook. Perfection is not expected, but how Chinese-licensed private companies do business at home and abroad does reflect back on the home country.

While beyond the scope of the present article, deeper consideration of the role of the Chinese State vs. Private Capital in China’s external relationships demands elucidation. What exactly does win-win mean?
While state-owned firms are clearly extensions of Chinese policy, how China manages — or fails to manage — the conduct of private or semi-state firms abroad, especially in contested or ethically sensitive zones speaks to the conscience of a nation.

Especially concerning, is the case of Chinese state-owned companies doing business for an occupier in occupied territory. This is morally magnified when the occupier, Israel, is under scrutiny by the World Court for committing genocide. Genocide is an act that morally upstanding countries will emphatically denounce as reprehensible; in addition, morally upstanding countries will take measures to publicly distance their state from such an evil-doer until such time as it sincerely atones for its crime against humanity. Highly moral countries — for example, Yemen — will make sacrifices to bring an end to such horrific crimes.

Professor and author T.P. Wilkinson, a keen China observer, remarked, “Non-interference is China’s top principle — business comes first. If there is any morality it only applies in China.”

China does not interfere in the culture and politics of other nations. That is understood. Nonetheless, morally centered people do not wish to see their country or any other country engage in violence against other nations in the world. And morally centered people do not wish to see their country abetting violence, not borne of self-defense, by another country. For allying with unrepentant rogue actors such as the United States and Israel, vassal states in Canada, Oceania, and Europe deserve to be regarded scornfully.

As an emerging superpower, China has increasingly garnered respect for pledging and delivering peaceful, win-win relations with other countries. That needs to be across the board. China is now faced with serious allegations, and it needs to come clean on what its companies are doing in occupied Palestine. One cannot expect that a country’s political leader is up-to-date and aware of all the ongoing functions of a country, domestically and externally, especially in a rapidly rising colossus of 1.4 billion people. However, when sordid facts come to the fore, a leader must lead. It is morally incumbent that chairman Xi deal forthrightly and promptly with any Chinese involvement in ignoble business affairs or crimes against humanity.

What Would Meaningful Action Look Like?

If Chinese firms are confirmed to be operating illegally in the occupied territories of Palestine, then I submit that an official Chinese public apology is demanded, also an immediate cessation of Chinese operations in what was once known as Mandate Palestine, and a turning over of Chinese assets in Mandate Palestine to Palestinian authorities. But it is for the Palestinians to determine what would be the proper rectification by China.

Why, one may ask, is such atonement not demanded of Canadians, American, and European interests in Mandate Palestine? It is and should be, but western governments have been unabashed in supporting colonialism, imperialism, and racism abroad. This speaks to the nature and conscience of Western governments that were so quick to fallaciously accuse China of genocide in Xinjiang, and yet they are loathe to acknowledge the factually undeniable genocide in Palestine. China, on the other hand, is viewed by much of the world’s people as a cut above the western governments.

Geopolitical Realism vs. Moral Idealism

While the present article acknowledges the current realpolitik constraints that China faces in balancing ties with Israel, the US, Arab countries, and the rest of the world, it posits the primacy of moral responsibility. Morality is what separates capitalism’s dog-eat-dog law-of-the-jungle from socialism, and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is what is practiced by China.

As such an unflinching moral audit of China’s actions in occupied Palestine is called for. Therefore, to maintain its high regard, China must earn and hold onto the people’s trust through morally centered economic activities at home and abroad, as is implied by win-win relationships. In a truly multipolar world not only must power be redistributed more equitably but shared moral standards must also be elevated.

It is decidedly not a win-win relationship when Palestinians are subjected to starvation, humiliation, murder, bombardment, theft of territory, and the indignity of the World Court taking what must seem like an eternity to put a halt to a crime that demands immediate action: genocide. That China companies would profit from a genocide would cast a pall over China that would be hard to shake.

If China aspires to genuine global leadership, then it must lead not just in development and diplomacy — but in conscience.

ENDNOTES:

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

Journalists continue to face grave threats in areas controlled by both the Houthis and the internationally recognized government. Violations — ranging from arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance to unfair trials — are carried out with near-total impunity, according to the statement.

Yemen remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. In April 2025, Yemeni-Dutch journalist Musab Al-Hattami was killed in a Houthi drone strike. In December 2024, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula executed journalist Mohamed Al-Maqri, whom the group had abducted in 2015. Between 2015 and 2020, at least 18 journalists were killed in Yemen.

Read the full statement in English and العربية.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Trump’s attack targeted Ras Issa a vital lifeline connecting the isolated, bombarded country to outside supply shipments. For its part, the US administration claimed that the bombing intended to prevent Iranian fuel from reaching “the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists” in order to “deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years.”

While it is US policy to delegitimize Ansar Allah (also known as “the Houthis”) as “Iran-backed terrorists,” in fact, 80 percent of Yemenis live under the Sanaa-based Supreme Political Council led by Ansar Allah, making them Yemen’s de facto government. They have a huge degree of public support, as evidenced by the regular protests of tens of even hundreds of thousands of Yemenis opposing US aggression and supporting Ansar Allah’s armed support for Palestinian liberation.

Ansar Allah survived eight years of Saudi-led attacks on Yemen, a war of aggression (backed militarily and diplomatically by governments of the US, Canada, and Europe) that levelled civilian infrastructure and killed almost 400,000 Yemenis. Trump’s bombings will not destroy the vilified “Houthi rebels,” but that is not their goal. What Washington wants is to force Yemen to withdraw its armed support for Palestinians resisting Israel’s genocide.

After Israel launched its onslaught against Gaza in October 2023, Yemen imposed a blockade on Red Sea shipping to Israel. As Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza reached genocidal proportions, Yemen launched drone and missile attacks against Israeli targets. From the beginning, Ansar Allah was very forthright: they stated that the attacks on Red Sea ships and Israeli targets would stop once Israel ceased its genocidal assault on Gaza. During the Gaza ceasefire of January 19 to March 18, 2025, Ansar Allah did cease its military actions in the Red Sea (even as Israel violated the ceasefire 962 times), clearly demonstrating the connection between Israel’s genocide and Yemeni military activity.

US efforts to paint the Yemenis as puppets of Iran, mindless terrorists, and maritime pirates are part of a concerted effort by Washington to obfuscate the just, defensive, and humanitarian motivations behind Ansar Allah’s actions. The recent phase of US attacks on Yemen began in January 2024 under former president Joe Biden, and these bombings received logistical support from, among other countries, Canada and the United Kingdom. After coming to office, Trump intensified the US war on Yemen. Since March, his attacks have killed more than 50 Yemenis, not counting the recent bombardment of civilians at the Ras Issa port. Reportedly, his administration is mulling a ground invasion of Yemen.

One must always keep in mind why America is upping its attacks on the Yemeni people. It is because Yemen is trying to prevent Israel, an outpost of US power in the Middle East, from carrying out a genocide. That’s it. International and humanitarian law mean nothing to Washington. US efforts to paint Ansar Allah as illegitimate, criminal, or aggressors are transparent attempts to rhetorically discredit a regional resistance movement in order to make the massacre of Yemenis palatable to Western audiences.

In the US empire’s eyes, the reason Yemenis need to be massacred is obvious: they are opponents of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Trump is massacring Yemenis so that Israel can continue massacring Palestinians. It really is that simple.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Owen Schalk.

Pope Francis has died after using his Easter Sunday address to call for peace in Gaza. I don’t know who the cardinals will pick to replace him, but I do know with absolute certainty that there are transnational intelligence operations in the works to make sure they select a more reliable supporter of Israel. They’ve probably been working on it since his health started failing.

Anyone who’s been reading me for a while knows my attitude toward Roman Catholicism can be described as openly hostile because of my family history with the Church’s sexual abuses under Cardinal Pell, but as far as popes go this one was decent. Francis had been an influential critic of Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza, calling for investigation of genocide allegations and denouncing the bombing of hospitals and the murder of humanitarian workers and civilians. He’d been personally calling the only Catholic parish in Gaza by phone every night during the Israeli onslaught, even as his health deteriorated.

In other words, he was a PR problem for Israel.

I hope another compassionate human being is announced as the next leader of the Church, but there are definitely forces pushing for a different outcome right now. There is no shortage terrible men who could be chosen for the position.

*****

*****

Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Omer Dostri told Israel’s Channel 12 News on Saturday that a deal with Hamas to release all hostages was a non-starter for the Israeli government, because it would require a commitment to lasting peace.

“At the moment, there can’t be one deal since Hamas isn’t saying: ‘Come get your hostages and that’s that,’ it’s demanding an end to the war,” Dostri said in the interview.

This comes as Hamas offers to return all hostages, stop digging tunnels, and put away its weapons in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. This is what Israel is dismissing as unacceptable.

The Gaza holocaust was never about freeing the hostages. This has been clear ever since Israel began aggressively bombing the place where the hostages are living, and it’s gotten clearer and clearer ever since. Last month Netanyahu made it clear that Israel intends to carry out Trump’s ethnic cleansing plans for the enclave even if Hamas fully surrenders.

When Washington’s podium people say the “war” in Gaza can end if Hamas releases the hostages and lays down their arms, they are lying. They are lying to ensure that the genocide continues.

When Israel apologists say “Release the hostages!” in response to criticisms of Israeli atrocities, they are lying. They know this has never had anything to do with hostages. They are lying to help Israel commit more atrocities.

It was never about the hostages. It was never about Hamas. What it’s really about was obvious from day one: purging Palestinians from Palestinian land. That’s all this has ever been.

*****

After executing 15 medical workers in Gaza and getting caught lying about it, the IDF has investigated itself and attributed the massacre to “professional failures” and “operational misunderstandings”, finding no evidence of any violation of its code of ethics.

It’s crazy to think about how much investigative journalism went into exposing this atrocity only to have Israel go “Yeah turns out we did an oopsie, no further action required, thank you to our allies for the latest shipment of bombs.”

*****

The death toll from Trump’s terrorist attack on a Yemen fuel port is now up to 80, with 150 wounded. Again, the US has not even tried to claim this was a military target. They said they targeted this critical civilian infrastructure to hurt the economic interests of the Houthis.

Those who are truly anti-war don’t support Trump. Those who support Trump aren’t truly anti-war.

I still get people telling me I need to be nicer to Trump supporters because they’re potential allies in resisting war, which to me is just so silly. What are they even talking about? Trump supporters, per definition, currently support the one person who is most singularly responsible for the horrific acts of war we are seeing in the middle east right now. Telling me they’re my allies is exactly as absurd as telling me Biden supporters were my allies last year would have been, except nobody was ever dumb enough to try to make that argument.

If you still support Trump in April 2025 after seeing all his monstrous behavior in Gaza and Yemen, then we are on completely opposite sides. You might think you’re on the same side as me because you oppose war in theory, but when the rubber meets the road it turns out you’ll go along with any acts of mass military slaughter no matter how evil so long as they are done by a Republican. We are not allies, we are enemies. You side with the most egregious warmonger in the world right now, and I want your side to fail.

*****

People say “It’s the Muslims!” or “It’s the Jews!”

No, it’s the Americans. The US-centralized empire is responsible for most of our world’s problems.

It says so much about the strength of the imperial propaganda machine that this isn’t more obvious to more people.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Caitlin Johnstone.

Since March 15, the United States has launched strikes on more than forty locations across Yemen in an ongoing attack against members of the Houthi movement, which has carried out more than 100 attacks on shipping vessels linked to Israel and its allies since October 2023. The Houthis say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and have recently resumed the campaign following the failed ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The new round of U.S. airstrikes has damaged critical ports and roads which UNICEF describes as “lifelines for food and medicine,” and killed at least twenty-five civilians, including four children, in the first week alone. Of the thirty-eight recorded strikes, twenty-one hit non-military, civilian targets, including a medical storage facility, a medical center, a school, a wedding hall, residential areas, a cotton gin facility, a health office, Bedouin tents, and Al Eiman University. The Houthis claim that at least fifty-seven people have died in total.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and other high-level Trump Administration officials had discussed real-time planning around these strikes in a group chat on Signal, a commercial messaging app. During the past week, Congressional Democrats including U.S. Senator Schumer and U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries expressed outrage over the Trump Administration’s recklessness, with Jeffries saying that what has happened “shocks the conscience.”

President Trump commented that there was “no harm done” in the administration’s use of Signal chats, “because the attack was unbelievably successful.” But the Democrats appear more shocked and outraged by the disclosure of highly secret war plans over Signal than by the actual nature of the attacks, which have killed innocent people, including children.

In fact, U.S. elected officials have seldom commented on the agony Yemen’s children endure as they face starvation and disease. Nor has there been discussion of the inherent illegality of the United States’s bombing campaign against an impoverished country in defense of Israel amid its genocide of Palestinians.

As commentator Mohamad Bazzi writes in The Guardian, “Anyone interested in real accountability for U.S. policy-making should see this as a far bigger scandal than the one currently unfolding in Washington over the leaked Signal chat.”

The Yemen vigil flyer points out that multiple Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs can use their GPS precision guidance system to “layer in” multiple warheads on a precise location, with each “digging” more deeply than the one before it to achieve deeper penetration. “This is considered particularly critical to achieving U.S. and broader Western Bloc objectives of neutralizing the Ansarullah Coalition’s military strength,” reports Military Watch Magazine, “as key Yemeni military and industrial targets are fortified deeply underground.”

Despite the efforts of peace activists across the country, a child in Yemen dies every ten minutes from preventable causes—and the Democratic Representatives in the Senate and the House from New York don’t seem to care.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kathy Kelly.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has reaffirmed the Trump administration’s defence commitments to America’s Pacific territories of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands and that any attack on them would be an attack on the mainland.

Hegseth touched down in Guam from Hawai’i on Thursday as part of an Indo-Pacific tour, his first as Defence Secretary, in which he is seeking to shore up traditional alliances to counter China.

Geostrategic competition between the US and China in the Pacific has seen Guam and neighboring CNMI become increasingly significant in supporting American naval and air operations, especially in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

• READ MORE: Other Micronesia defence reports

Both territories are also within range of Chinese and North Korean ballistic missiles and the US tested a defence system in Guam in December.

Any attack on Guam and the Commonwealth Northern Marianas Islands would be met with “appropriate response,” Hegseth said during his brief visit, emphasising both territories were central to the US defence posture focused on containing China.

“We’re defending our homeland,” Hegseth said. “Guam and CNMI are vital parts of America, and I want to be very clear — to everyone in this room, to the cameras — any attack against these islands is an attack against the US.”

“We’re going to continue to stay committed to our presence here,” Hegseth said. “It’s important to emphasise: we are not seeking war with Communist China. But it is our job to ensure that we are ready.”

Key US strategic asset
Located closer to Beijing than Hawai’i, Guam serves as a key US strategic asset, known as the “tip of the spear,” with 10,000 military personnel, an air base for F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers, and home port for Virginia-class nuclear submarines.

The pledge from Hegseth comes as debate on Guam’s future as a US territory has intensified, with competing calls by some residents for full statehood and UN-mandated decolonisation, led by the Indigenous Chamorro people.

Defending Guam and CNMI, Hegseth said, aligns with President Donald Trump’s “goal to achieve peace through strength by putting America first”.

He delivered remarks at Andersen Air Force Base and took an aerial tour of the island before meeting with Lou Leon Guerrero and Arnold Palacios, governors of Guam and Northern Marianas, respectively.

Guerrero appealed to Hegseth about the “great impact” the US military buildup on Guam had had on the island’s residents.

“We welcome you, and we welcome the position and the posture that President Trump has,” Guerrero told Hegseth, during opening statements before their closed-door meeting.

“We are the centre of gravity here. We are the second island chain of defence,” she said. “We want to be a partner in the readiness effort but national security cannot happen without human health security.”

Funding for hospital
Guerrero sought funding for a new hospital, estimated to cost US$600 million.

“Our island needs a regional hospital capable of handling mass casualties — whether from conflict or natural disasters,” she told Hegseth.

“We are working very closely in partnership with the military, and one of our asks is to be a partner in the financing of that hospital.”

Afterwards Guerrero told reporters she did not have time to discuss the housing crisis caused by the US military buildup.

Earlier this month, Guerrero warned in her “state of the island” address of US neglect of Guam’s 160,000 residents, where one-in-five are estimated to live below the poverty line.

“Let us be clear about this: Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter, because housing aid to Guam is cut, or if 36,000 of our people lose access to Medicaid and Medicare coverage keeping them healthy, alive and out of poverty,” Guerrero said.

At the end of his visit to Guam, Hegseth announced in a statement he had also reached an “understanding” with President Wesley Simina of the Federated States of Micronesia to begin planning and construction of US$400 million in military infrastructure projects in the State of Yap.

Territorial background
Simina’s office would not confirm to BenarNews he had met with Hegseth in Guam, saying only he was “off island.”

As a territory, Guam residents are American citizens but they cannot vote for the US president and their lone delegate to the Congress has no voting power.

The US acquired Guam in 1898 after winning the Spanish-American War, and CNMI from Japan in 1945 after its defeat in the Second World War. Both remain unincorporated territories to this day.

The Defence Department holds about 25 percent of Guam’s land and is preparing to spend billions to upgrade the island’s military infrastructure as another 5000 American marines relocate from Japan’s Okinawa islands.

On Tuesday, Hegseth was in Hawai’i meeting officials of the US Indo-Pacific Command. Speaking with the media in Honolulu, he said his Asia-Pacific visit was to show strength to allies and “reestablish deterrence.”

Hegseth’s week-long tour comes against a backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness. Its coast guard vessels have recently encroached into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea and around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

His visit will be closely watched in the Pacific for signs of the Trump administration’s commitment to traditional allies following a rift between Washington and Europe that has tested the transatlantic alliance.

The trip also threatens to be overshadowed by the fallout from revelations that he and other national security officials discussed attack plans against Yemen’s Houthis on the messaging app Signal with a journalist present.

Flagrant violation
Critics are calling it a flagrant violation of information security protocols.

During his first term, Trump revived Washington’s engagements in the Pacific island region after long years of neglect paved the way for China’s initiatives.

He hosted leaders of the US freely associated states of Palau, Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia at the White House in 2019.

The Biden administration followed through, doubling the engagement with an increased presence and complementing the military buildup with economic assistance that sought to outdo China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The new Trump administration, however, cut the cord, dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and along with it, the millions of dollars pledged to Pacific island nations.

The abolition of about 80 percent of USAID programmes sent mixed signals to the island nations and security experts have warned that China would fill the void it has created.

From Guam, Hegseth has travelled to Philippines and Japan, where he will participate in a ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima and will later meet with Japanese leaders and US military forces.

Republished from BenarNews with permission. Stefan Armbruster in Brisbane contributed to this story.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Asia Pacific.

“Ahmed Awadhah appears to be the latest Yemeni journalist to disappear suddenly off the streets, without a trace. This alarming pattern underscores the extreme dangers Yemeni journalists face reporting from one of the world’s most perilous conflict zones,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Those responsible for Awadhah’s enforced disappearance must be held to account. It is long overdue for all factions in Yemen to end this abhorrent practice of targeting the press.”

The Iranian-backed Houthis, who control Sanaa and govern more than 70% of the country’s population, have been fighting a Saudi-backed coalition since 2015.

Awadhah is a prominent Yemeni journalist who founded and manages the local radio station Atheer FM, as well as contributing to the local news site Khuyut, the Jordan-based nonprofit Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, and the independent platform Noon Post.

Najm Al-Din Qasem, an investigative journalist close to Awadhah, told CPJ that several members of the Houthi group had been harassing and pressurizing Awadhah to broadcast their propaganda on Atheer FM.

Waheed al-Sufi, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Al-Arabiya, was also forcibly disappeared in 2015 and is widely believed to be in Houthi custody. Renowned freelancer and regular Al Jazeera and Voice of America contributor Naseh Shaker disappeared in November 2023, with reports indicating he may be detained by the Southern Transitional Council, the de facto authority in southern Yemen.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The Trump administration has vowed to continue its military strikes against the Houthi movement that controls much of Yemen, and says it will hold Iran responsible for any retaliation from its ally. Since Saturday, U.S. warplanes have launched dozens of large-scale attacks on multiple towns across Yemen, killing dozens of people. The strikes came after the Houthis threatened to resume attacks on Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip. For more on Yemen and the regional dynamics, we speak with Saudi journalist and filmmaker Safa Al Ahmad, who has been reporting on Yemen since 2010. “Supporting the Palestinians … has incredibly increased Houthi popularity,” says Al Ahmad.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

New Zealand’s National-led coalition government’s policy on Gaza seems caught between a desire for a two-state diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and closer alignment with the US, which supports a Netanyahu government strongly opposed to a Palestinian state

In the last 17 months, Gaza has been the scene of what Thomas Merton once called the unspeakable — human wrongdoing on a scale and a depth that seems to go beyond the capacity of words to adequately describe.

The latest Gaza conflict began with a horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that prompted a relentless Israel ground and air offensive in Gaza with full financial, logistical and diplomatic backing from the Biden administration.

• READ MORE: US promises to use ‘overwhelming lethal force’ on Yemen’s Houthis – Israeli blockade ‘sadism’ condemned
• Other fragile Gaza ceasefire reports

During this period, around 50,000 people – 48,903 Palestinians and 1706 Israelis – have been reported killed in the Gaza conflict, according to the official figures of the Gaza Health Ministry, as well as 166 journalists and media workers, 120 academics,and more than 224 humanitarian aid workers.

Moreover, a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, signed in mid-January, seems to be hanging by a thread.

Israel has resumed its blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and cut off electricity after Hamas rejected an Israeli proposal to extend phase 1 of the ceasefire deal (to release more Israeli hostages) without any commitment to implement phase 2 (that envisaged ending the conflict in Gaza and Israel withdrawing its troops from the territory).

Hamas insists on negotiating phase 2 as signed by both parties in the January ceasefire agreement

Over the weekend, Israel reportedly launched air-strikes in Gaza and the Trump administration unleashed a wave of attacks on Houthi rebel positions in Yemen after the Houthis warned Israel not to restart the war in Gaza.

New Zealand and the Gaza conflict
Although distant in geographic terms, the Gaza crisis represents a major moral and legal challenge to New Zealand’s self-image and its worldview based on the strengthening of an international rules-based order.

New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, emphasised partnership and cooperation between indigenous Māori and European settlers in nation-building.

While the aspirations of the Treaty have yet to be fully realised, the credibility of its vision of reconciliation at home depends on New Zealand’s willingness to uphold respect for human rights and the rule of law in the international arena, particularly in states like Israel where tensions persist between the settler population and Palestinians in occupied territories like the West Bank.

New Zealand’s declaratory stance towards Gaza
In 2023 and 2024, New Zealand consistently backed calls in the UN General Assembly for humanitarian truces or ceasefires in Gaza. It also joined Australia and Canada in February and July last year to demand an end to hostilities.

The New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, told the General Assembly in April 2024 that the Security Council had failed in its responsibility “to maintain international peace and security”.

He was right. The Biden administration used its UN Security Council veto four times to perpetuate this brutal onslaught in Gaza for nearly 15 months.

In addition, Peters has repeatedly said there can be no military resolution of a political problem in Gaza that can only be resolved through affirming the Palestinian right to self-determination within the framework of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

The limitations of New Zealand’s Gaza approach
Despite considerable disagreement with Netanyahu’s policy of “mighty vengeance” in Gaza, the National-led coalition government had few qualms about sending a small Defence Force deployment to the Red Sea in January 2024 as part of a US-led coalition effort to counter Houthi rebel attacks on commercial shipping there.

While such attacks are clearly illegal, they are basically part of the fallout from a prolonged international failure to stop the US-enabled carnage in Gaza.

In particular, the NZDF’s Red Sea deployment did not sit comfortably with New Zealand’s acceptance in September 2024 of the ICJ’s ruling that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) was “unlawful”.

At the same time, the National-led coalition government’s silence on US President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to “own” Gaza, displace two million Palestinian residents and make the territory the “Riviera” of the Middle East was deafening.

Furthermore, while Wellington announced travel bans on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank in February 2024, it has had little to say publicly about the Netanyahu government’s plans to annex the West Bank in 2025. Such a development would gravely undermine the two-state solution, violate international law, and further fuel regional tensions.

New Zealand’s low-key policy
On balance, the National-led coalition government’s policy towards Gaza appears to be ambivalent and lacking moral and legal clarity in a context in which war crimes have been regularly committed since October 7.

Peters was absolutely correct to condemn the UNSC for failing to deliver the ceasefire that New Zealand and the overwhelming majority of states in the UN General Assembly had wanted from the first month of this crisis.

But the New Zealand government has had no words of criticism for the US, which used its power of veto in the UNSC for more than a year to thwart the prospect of a ceasefire and provided blanket support for an Israeli military campaign that killed huge numbers of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

By cooperating with the Biden administration against Houthi rebels and adopting a quietly-quietly approach to Trump’s provocative comments on Gaza and his apparent willingness to do whatever it takes to help Israel “to get the job done’, New Zealand has revealed a selective approach to upholding international law and human rights in the desperate conditions facing Gaza

Professor Robert G. Patman is an Inaugural Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair and his research interests concern international relations, global security, US foreign policy, great powers, and the Horn of Africa. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A former US diplomat, Nabeel Khoury, says President Donald Trump’s decision to launch attacks against the Houthis is misguided, and this will not subdue them.

“For our president who came in wanting to avoid war and wanting to be a man of peace, he’s going about it the wrong way,” he said.

“There are many paths that can be used before you resort to war.” Khoury told Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: US bombs Yemen, killing 31, after Houthis threaten Israel over Gaza
• Other Gaza genocide reports

The danger to shipping in the Red Sea was “a justifiable reason for concern”, Khoury told Al Jazeera in an interview, but added that it was a problem that could be resolved through diplomacy.

Ansar Allah (Houthi) media sources said that at least four areas had been razed by the US warplanes that targeted, in particular, a residential area north of the capital, Sanaa, killing 31 people.

The Houthis, who had been “bombed severely all over their territory” in the past, were not likely to be subdued through “a few weeks of bombing”, Khoury said.

“If you think that Hamas, living and fighting on a very small piece of land, totally surrounded by land, air and sea, and yet, 17 months of bombardment by the Israelis did not get rid of them.

‘More rugged space’
“The Houthis live in a much more rugged space, mountainous regions — it would be virtually impossible to eradicate them,” Khoury said.

“So there is no military logic to what’s happening, and there is no political logic either.”

Providing background, Patty Culhane reported from Washington that there were several factual errors in the justification President Trump had given for his order.

“It’s important to point out that the Houthi attacks have stopped since the ceasefire in Gaza [on January 19], although the Houthis were threatening to strike again,” she said.

“His other justification is saying that no US-flagged vessel has transited the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden safely in more than a year.

“And then he says another reason is because Houthis attacked a US military warship.

“That happened when Trump was not president.”

Down to 10,000 ships
She said the White House was now putting out more of a communique, “saying that before the attacks, there were 25,000 ships that transited the Red Sea annually. Now it’s down to 10,000 so, obviously, sort of shooting down the president’s concept that nobody is actually transiting the region.

“And it did list the number of attacks. The US commercial ships have been attacked 145 times since 2023 in their list.”

Meanwhile, at least nine people, including three journalists, have been killed and several others wounded in an Israeli drone attack on relief aid workers at Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, according to Palestinian media.

The attack reportedly targeted a relief team that was accompanied by journalists and photographers. At least three local journalists were among the dead.

The Palestinian Journalists’ Protection Centre said in a statement that Israel had killed “three journalists in an airstrike on a media team documenting relief efforts in northern Gaza”, reports

“The journalists were documenting humanitarian relief efforts for those affected by Israel’s genocidal war,” the statement added, according to Anadolu.

In a statement, the Israeli military claimed it struck “two terrorists . . .  operating a drone that posed a threat” to Israeli soldiers in the area of Beit Lahiya.

“Later, a number of additional terrorists collected the drone operating equipment and entered a vehicle. The [Israeli military] struck the terrorists,” it added, without providing any evidence about its claims.

‘Liberation’ poetry
In Auckland on Saturday, protesters at the Aotearoa New Zealand’s weekly “free Palestine” rallies gave a tribute to poet Mahmoud Darwish — the “liberation voice of Palestine” — by reciting peace and justice poetry and marked the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre when a lone white terrorist gunned down 51 people at Friday prayers.

This was one of more than 20 Palestinian solidarity events happening across the motu this weekend.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“It looks like Hiroshima. It looks like Germany at the end of World War Two,” says an Israeli-American historian and professor of holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University about the horrifying reality of Gaza.

Professor Omer Bartov, has described Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza as an “act of annihilation” of the Palestinian people, reports Middle East Eye.

Dr Bartov said that not only had Israeli forces been moving displaced Palestinians around the Gaza Strip but they had also been strategically bombing mosques, museums, hospitals, and anything that served the health or culture of a people — in an attempt to cleanse the entire area of Palestinians.

• READ MORE: Israeli attacks kill 21 Palestinians in Gaza in past 24 hours
• Other war on Gaza reports

Al Jazeera reports that an Israeli drone attack on the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza targeted a group of people gathered at a phone charging and internet distribution point, killing three people.

According to a witness, this was the only point in the refugee camp where people trapped in the area charge their phones and connect to the internet to be in touch with family members who are displaced in the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip.

This was not the first time that the Israeli military has carried out deliberate attacks on such connectivity points.

Houthis ballistic missile wounds 14
Meanwhile, a ballistic missile launched by the Houthis from Yemen has broken through Israeli defences above and below the Earth’s atmosphere before slamming into Tel Aviv, reports Israel’s public broadcaster Kan.

It said interceptors from the Arrow missile defence system were launched into the upper atmosphere after detecting the missile, but missed the target and failed to stop it before it entered Israeli territory.

As captured in numerous videos, two more interceptors were then fired in the lower atmosphere, also failing to shoot down the missile.

At least 14 people were wounded after a failed interception of the ballistic missile.

This was the third incident of its kind just this week. The Israeli army says it was now investigating why it was not intercepted and why this was such a significant failure.

Since the start of the war, the Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles, and more than 170 drones in support of the Palestinians in Gaza. The Houthis have said they would continue the attacks until Israel ends its war in the besieged enclave.

In July, there was a drone that evaded all Israeli air defences, no siren sounded, and it was able to detonate in the middle of Tel Aviv and kill one person.

This time, it was just one minute from the time the sirens rang until the moment of impact.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Until November 26, 2024, Israel was failing in almost every way. Even after enduring more than a year of genocide against the civilian population of Gaza, Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza remained as effective a force as ever, despite its reliance on weapons made in its own underground workshops from recycled and captured Israeli ordnance and other materials. In fact, the genocide assured a constant flow of volunteers to its doors, a supply of materials for its workshops, and a network of eyes and ears throughout Gaza.

The result was a guerrilla war of attrition for which the Israeli military, built and structured to deliver rapid, overwhelming blows to destroy its adversaries, was not prepared, nor to which it adapted. Losses were not huge, but they were more than Israel had previously suffered, and it seemed without end, including both soldiers and major ground equipment, such as tanks, armored personnel carriers and lightly armored bulldozers. Furthermore, Israel was simultaneously engaged in a second protracted armed conflict with a well-armed, well-trained and battled-hardened (in Syria) Hezbollah force in Lebanon, which had driven out the Jewish settler population in the north of Israel and had struck numerous military and intelligence gathering targets in the same area and beyond, with considerable effect.

In the meantime, Yemeni Ansarallah “Houthi” forces interdicted shipping from Asia through the Red Sea to the Israeli port of Eilat, and attacked the port with missiles, forcing it to close, and the ships to go around Africa and back through the Mediterranean, restricting and delaying the supply of goods and spare parts and making them more costly – or making them unprofitable to ship at all.

Much of the rest of the world also lost its taste for trade with Israel due to the stigma of its genocide in Gaza. The relatively important tourist industry dried up, as did investment. Even the arms industry slackened. A blank check from the US allowed Israel to keep its citizens supplied with paychecks and with sufficient products and services to buy, but at least 48,000 businesses closed, including agriculture in the north and in the Gaza “envelope”.

The toll on Israel was the greatest and longest in its history of warfare. Israel keeps most of its casualty figures hidden, but it admits to more than 27,000 removed from combat due to wounds suffered. Including deaths on all fronts, the casualty total is, therefore, necessarily above 30,000, almost all military, while Israel’s targets in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon are overwhelmingly civilian and more than half women and children. The Israeli military has complained that it is 20% short of the number of combat troops needed, and increasing numbers of exhausted reservists are refusing to serve. Although Gaza has lost an estimated 10% of its population to genocide, Israel has lost a similar proportion to emigration since October 8, 2023.

This was the state of Israel on November 25, 2024. Would Israel still exist after another year of this? There was reason to doubt its stamina. But the following day a truce was declared with Lebanon. There is no doubt that both Hezbollah and the Israeli military were exhausted and heavily damaged. The truce was not directly with Hezbollah but rather with the Lebanese government, because Hezbollah, in addition to its role as a defender against its aggressive neighbor to the south, participates in what is in practice a loosely consensus government, and it wants to be seen as respecting the will of all the parties.

Initially, the truce only stanched the blood on both sides of the border, and allowed both sides to halt their losses. Unfortunately, its true purpose had been determined months and even years earlier, by Turkiye, the US, Israel and their mercenary and mostly takfiri proxies in Syria. It was to make way for resumption of the war against the Syrian government, which started in 2011 but had been largely on hold since 2020. As we know now, the takfiri mercenaries, backed by Turkiye, US/NATO and Israel and furnished with the latest electronic and drone technology, quickly overwhelmed the Syrian forces, which had been weakened by years of debilitating economic sanctions and the flight of largely economic refugees, such that only half of its original population of 23 million remained. There are some reports that the operation was planned for the spring of 2025 but had been moved forward because of the losses being suffered by Israel, both economically and on the battlefield, and its internal political turmoil, as well as abandonment by a significant proportion of Zionist supporters, both through departure from Israel and from the international Jewish community.

Each of the participants in the plan had its own objectives, which are now coming to fruition in greater or lesser measure. For the takfiri forces, subsidized, trained and armed by Turkiye, the CIA, the Pentagon, and to a lesser extent Ukrainian military advisors, the Israeli military, Mossad, and radical Islamist groups in the Arabian and other countries, the objective was to conquer Syria and create a regime based on a radical and racist version of Islam shunned by most of the Muslim world. They had been recruited from at least 82 countries around the world, with the largest number from central Asia and the Arab world, including Syria, where they and their families formed a radical militant minority of 5-10% of the Syrian population allied with the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda and its affiliates and offshoots, such as ISIS/ISIL, that had been attempting for decades to establish a regime in Damascus that would enforce its Draconian laws on the rest of the population. In the areas of Syria that they had captured off and on since 2011, they showed what such rule might be like, by slaughtering and enslaving much of the non-Muslim, non-Sunni and more secularized Muslim population. Some of that has recommenced in the newly “liberated” territory during the last two weeks, despite attempts in the Western media to make them appear more tolerant. It remains to be seen how useful their sponsors will consider them to be now that their main role has been completed.

In the case of Turkiye, one of the major sponsors, the goals are to resettle its 3.5 million Syrian refugee population back in Syria, to capture the northern portion of Syrian territory for itself, and to reward the Turkmen and Uyghur fighters, which it recruited from central Asia, with land inside Syria, displacing the existing population with one loyal to Turkiye. In addition, Turkiye seeks to crush and displace the Syrian Kurdish population along the northern and northeastern Syrian frontier, which it considers to be terrorists in league with Turkiye’s own suppressed Kurdish population. Turkiye already is calling Aleppo its 82nd province and taking military action against the Syrian Kurds, especially in the western Kurdish communities.

Syria’s Kurdish population is itself a complex participant in the fighting. Although it has maintained a largely autonomous enclave in the northeast portion of Syria under the protection of US occupying forces, it has had nonbelligerent relations with the Assad government, which asked the Kurds to help defend Syria in the early years, and on at least one occasion offered to defend them against Turkish and takfiri forces that were invading Kurdish areas. The aim of the US sponsors of the Kurds, on the other hand, was to deny Syria sovereignty over its petroleum fields and wheat production area, in order to destroy the economy and ultimately replace the government with a compliant puppet regime. In their otherwise desperate situation, the Kurds could hardly turn away the US offer of support. The US has tried to restrain the Kurds from attacks against Turkiye, a NATO ally, but not entirely successfully, and the Kurdish leaders are drawn more from the recent immigrants/refugees from Turkiye rather than the more established population, which had stronger ties to the Assad government. Unfortunately for the Kurds, the US government now has somewhat less reason to support them after the fall of the Assad government, since that was the main reason was for their backing. Nevertheless, the larger neighboring Kurdish community in Iraq is a strong ally of the US and NATO, which may be reason enough for the US to continue support. In addition, the US may consider the Syrian Kurds to be a useful tool in restraining Turkiye’s obvious regional ambitions under Erdogan.

There is no doubt that Israel and its US patron gained the most from the fall of Syria, which had been an objective for many decades, and which was a very high priority for Israel, as described at the beginning of this piece. It arguably rescued Israel from total collapse. Besides removing the major remaining frontline belligerent state with Israel, the loss of Syria severed the supply line between Iran and Iraq on the east from Lebanon and the Mediterranean on the west. This means that troops and supplies can no longer easily pass from Iran to Hezbollah. Although Hezbollah retains much of its still unused formidable capability for the time being, it is likely to degrade over time, enabling Israel to reinstate the security of its border with Lebanon and making it safe for the refugees from the northern settlements, currently living in temporary housing, mostly in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, to return to their homes, as soon as they are repaired and rebuilt.

The takfiri seizure of Syria has also enabled Israel to destroy most of Syria’s stored weaponry and munitions in a massive aerial bombing campaign, using the vast quantity of bunker-buster and other bombs and missiles supplied by the US during the last 14 months. The Syrian stores are not only a supply that Hezbollah might have been able to use, but also one that the unpredictable takfiris might eventually decide to use against Israeli forces, should they be so inclined. It has also been an opportunity for Israel to capture additional territory, including the “disputed” Lebanese Shebaa farms region along the border of Lebanon, as well as much of the hitherto unoccupied portion of the Golan Heights, with strategic Mt. Hermon (Jabal al-Sheikh), the highest peak in the region, that has remained under Syrian control until now.

From Israel’s point of view, the disappearance of a very strategic member of the Axis of Resistance and the weakening of Hezbollah also means that Israel regains control of its northern border and will not have to devote as many troops to its defense. This in turn means that the refugee Israeli population that had to abandon its homes along the frontier can now return, although many of them will have to be repaired or rebuilt.

These developments are also likely to reduce or stop the flight from Israel, and perhaps restore confidence in Israel’s leadership and its aims. Foremost among these is the depopulation of the Gaza Strip, using some of the military forces released from the northern frontier, and its repopulation with Israeli settlers. Although Israel’s genocidal policies have alienated much of the world, as well as a growing portion of the Jewish diaspora, Israel retains a hardcore Zionist faithful who encourage and approve of its actions, and its network of sayanim and influencers in the US and other societies and governments, coordinated by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, continues to be enormously effective in delivering to Israel whatever it may need to accomplish its goals, regardless of the views of the electorate in these countries, which are in any case heavily influenced by pro-Zionist media and censorship.

There is, finally, yet another potential benefit to Israel in the not-so-distant future. In 1967, General Moshe Dayan proclaimed at the end of the June war that Israel had achieved all of its [immediate] territorial aims – except in Lebanon. This objective, and especially southern Lebanon, had been a coveted Zionist territory since before the founding of Israel in 1948, not least because of its access to the Litani river, the largest in the eastern Mediterranean. At least four times since then, Israel has invaded the region, emptying it of most of its population of more than a million inhabitants. Each time, the resistance in Lebanon eventually repelled and defeated the incursion. With the fall of Syria, however, and the probable reduction of strength of Hezbollah, this objective now becomes more realistic and more likely in the coming years.

For the United States, the fall of Syria means a major realignment of power in West Asia, a highly important part of the globe, both strategically and for its energy production. It empowers Turkiye, Israel and other US allies in the region. It disempowers Russia, Hezbollah and Iran, and it opens the possibility of assuring that the Gulf monarchies remain in its stable, while discouraging resistance. It also potentially allows the US to reduce its forces in the region and to send them to East Asia, where it has been postponing its planned confrontation with China. For Yemen and the Ansarallah movement, little changes immediately. Its partnership with Iran will undoubtedly remain, but over time its support of the Palestinian resistance may be affected if and when that resistance weakens.

The loss of Syria is therefore a major victory for Zionism and imperialism in West Asia, and a major defeat for the Axis of Resistance and the independence, self-determination and sovereignty of nation states, both in the region and potentially across the globe.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Larudee.

However, this seemingly great opportunity to restart the ‘new revolution’ in Iran did not last long. On the morning of 7 October 2024, the American aspiration of a feminist and democratic revolution or regime change in Iran, which was also shared by its Western allies and West Asian client regimes, was transformed into a nightmare when a few hundred Palestinians carried out the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation in the occupied Palestine. The political landscape of West Asia has been altered by this military operation in such a way that American political projects, such as the Iranian regime change and the Abraham Accords, have faded away. To the surprise of the United States and its Western allies, such as Norway, and thanks to the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, 8 October 2023 became the day of the revival of the ideals of the 1979 revolution, such as freedom and independence from Western Imperialism. The liberation of Palestine from occupation was one of the particular ideals of the Iranian revolution and the political system it generated. As the Iranian revolutionaries of 1979 comprehended Palestine until its liberation in a state of revolution, they coined the slogan “Wake up people, Iran has become Palestine” which became one of the most popular slogans of the revolution. Several days before the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation,  Western media outlet were reporting on the latest developments of the Abraham Accord and the excitement of the leaders of the slave-states of the Persian Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirate, for signing the Accord. However, the leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, cautioned the leaders of these Arab regimes about the futility of their efforts to normalize relations with the apartheid regime of Israel. He described their efforts as “betting on a losing horse” because, in his opinion, the Palestinians were more capable than ever in their struggle for liberation from occupation.

In preparation for the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to give the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize to Narges Mohammadi, a political activist with zero political influence in Iran, Norway organized a large gathering of Norwegian academics/imperialist agents and Iranian academics in diaspora who functioned as native informers. The Norwegian hosts were evidently interested in evaluating the degree to which the American regime change project coincided with the ‘new revolution’ in Iran. The conference persuaded the Norwegian Nobel Committee that Narges Mohammadi would be an ideal candidate for the Nobel Prize, as it would position her as a potential leader of the “new feminist and democratic” revolution in Iran. Because she is prone to repeating statements from Western masters about almost everything and remaining silent when they want her to be silent. The fact that she did not speak out regarding the Israeli genocide in Palestine explains, to a certain extent, why she was selected by the Nobel Committee as the winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize. Norway’s desire to play a role in the American regime change project in Iran was not a thoughtless decision, but a continuation of its effort in enhancing its own position in the American foreign policy strategy in the West Asia formulated in its foreign policy strategy document published in 2008. The document reveals that Norway’s foreign policy is merely an adjunct to the American foreign policy in West Asia and elsewhere. In accordance with the Norwegian foreign policy document and in the name of humanitarian intervention, Norway took an active role in the bombing of Libya in 2011. Many years later, as late as 2018, the Head of the Middle East Studies at the University of Oslo, who has been so dedicated to this foreign policy document, signs an open letter to the UN asking for humanitarian intervention in Syria. The letter to the United Nations states that Syrian sovereignty should not be viewed as a hindrance to protecting the Syrian people, as Kofi Anan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, stated in one of his reports. According to Kofi Anan, “no legal principles — even sovereignty — can ever shield crimes against humanity.”

The Norwegian political elite was under the impression that by giving the Nobel Prize to a nobody of Iranian politics, they could either contribute to a regime change in accordance with the American plan or transform Iran into a new Syria and a target for humanitarian intervention. However, I doubt that any European academic would have the courage to ask the United Nations for humanitarian intervention in Palestine after the Israeli genocidal response to the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation. The unconditional support of the United States and other Western governments for the Israeli genocide against the defenseless Palestinian civilians for a year and now against Lebanese civilians has led people in the Global South to realize that the real meaning of democracy, human rights, and women’s rights that Westerners have been trying to bring them was genocide. After the 7th of October 2023, people from the Global South became aware that Israel, the state that Westerners have attempted to portray as the sole democracy in West Asia, is in fact a genocidal, racist and apartheid regime. They have discovered that the sole democracy in West Asia is a remnant of the colonial settler regimes of the past. This is the reason why its conduct cannot be distinguished from the avaricious and ruthless colonial powers of the past, and its survival and future depend on the persistence of American global dominance. The al-Aqsa Flood Operation not only succeeded in bringing to the attention of global public opinion the appeal of the oppressed and ethnically cleansed Palestinians, but also in defeating the American regime change project in Iran. Furthermore, the al-Aqsa Flood Operation revealed that Iran and the Axis of Resistance were the only forces that supported the Palestinian struggle for liberation from the Israeli occupation, as part of their own struggle against Western imperialism and in defense of their national sovereignty and independence in the region. The question is: How have Iran and its allies, in the Axis of Resistance, been able to liberate or protect themselves from the ideological deceptions and political traps, introduced and created by Western imperialism and their native informers, which would divide them and put them against each other?

Divide to Conquer and Rule

The methods Western governments use to promote their political and economic interests in the West Asia region are rarely examined by scholars and journalists who are specialized in the region. The scholars and journalists who work in the region are interested in the ethnic, religious, social and political dividing lines, cleavages or fault lines within the states and societies to enable Western governments led by the United States to exploit these dividing lines, cleavages and fault lines to their advantage. Recently, the Middle East Eye published a critical article on the preoccupation of Western governments, media, and academia with such dividing lines, whereas this publication has been preoccupied with such fault lines since its inception. While Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with the United States and Britain, was bombing noncombatant population and civilian infrastructure in Yemen for many years, the Middle East Eye was saying that the Iranian-backed Shia Houthi positions were the targets of the bombings. This publication would happily report that the Palestinian Hamas movement issued a statement supporting the ‘constitutional legitimacy’ of the Saudi collaborator, Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi. According to the Middle East Eye: “This statement is considered Hamas’s first tacit message of support for an ongoing Saudi-led military campaign against the Shiite Houthi group in Yemen, even as the Palestinian group did not clearly mention the campaign in its statement.” The Middle East Eye and outlets similar to it are the culmination of the American-Western declared plans for promoting democracy, human rights, stability and peace in West Asia. They are specialized in causing internal divisions and conflicts in the region. These media outlets typically exhibit empathy for the suffering of Palestinians and advocate for justice in the face of Israeli brutality. However, they hold Iran and the Axis of Resistance as the primary causes of instability in the region. This is why its editors, correspondents, and contributors hold an anti-Iranian position, while Iran has demonstrated that it is the only state in the entire world that sincerely supports the Palestinian struggle for liberation from the Israeli occupation. They downplay, dismiss, or criticize the Iranian position on the Palestinian issue. To create division within the Axis of Resistance, Middle East Eye spread lies about the Iranian Commander of the Qods Force’s role in the assassination of Seyed Hassan Nasrollah, the leader of Hezbollah. Qods Force is, in fact, the principal architect of the Axis of Resistance against Western imperialism and Israel in West Asia.

There are thousands of educated individuals from the West Asia region who have been working as native informers or imperialist propagandists for the United States and its Western allies since the early 1990s. These native informers and imperialist propagandists have been recruited as academics, NGOs, or political activists. While native informers have been elaborating on social, religious, ethnic, political, and cultural divisions within the region, imperialist propagandists have been attempting to turn these divisions into actual conflicts. However, the fact that a highly respected scholar of the West Asia region told the world that the 2023 fascist riots in Iran were a revolution against internal colonization demonstrated that native informers can easily turn into imperialist propagandists when the imperialist employer says so. “Woman, Life, Freedom is a movement of liberation from this internal colonization. It is a movement to reclaim life. Its language is secular, wholly devoid of religion. Its peculiarity lies in its feminist facet.”  A decade ago, this scholar argued that the security and economic interests of Western imperialism in West Asia were compatible with the political democratization of the region and considered the so-called Arab Spring to be the expression of the union between Western governments and Arab, Iranian and Turkish democrats under the leadership of Turkey. But since he has not learned anything from the failure of the Arab Spring, he has turned from being a native informer into an imperialist propagandist who refuses to learn from his logical inconsistencies and experiences. This is the reason why, years after the failure of the “Arab Spring” and months after the morally and politically justifiable suppression of the fascist riots in Iran, this native informer-imperialist propagandist cautions those he believes to be the genuine agents of the revolutionary movement that if they are unwilling or unable to assume power, others will. In his view, it was the unwillingness of the revolutionaries or those who had initiated and carried the uprisings forward in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen to assume power that allowed the free-riders, counterrevolutionaries, and others to assume power in the “Arab Spring”.

Before addressing the question of who are the protagonists and free riders of the “Arab Spring” in these countries, it is worth noting that the Bahraini Uprising, which was by far the most genuine uprising among the so-called “Arab Spring” uprisings, has been omitted from the narratives about the uprisings. Almost simultaneously with the brutal suppression of the Bahraini uprising by the Saudi Arabian and Emirati military, the terrorist campaigns against the Syrian government commenced. While Saudi Arabia and Qatar provided funding for the terrorist campaigns in Syria, Turkey provided logistical support for the terrorist campaign, and Western governments provided political cover by tying it to the Arab Spring. Western governments, their academia, and media, which were totally uncaring about the bloody suppression and murdering of Bahraini political activists, stood firm behind the terrorist organizations active in Syria as the only advocates of democracy and human rights. Contrary to the claims of this native informer and imperialist propagandist, almost nothing happened in Iraq and Lebanon during the ‘Arab Spring.’ After the anti-corruption demonstrations in these countries in 2019-2020 were hijacked by pro-Western and anti-Iran and anti-Hezbollah forces with the active support of American embassies, these two countries were added to the ‘Arab Spring.’

The Arab Spring 2 was an attempt to weaken and marginalize the Axis of Resistance, which included Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, the Iraqi Popular Mobilization forces, and the Yemeni Ansarullah. In fact, the same political forces and states that supported the Israeli war against Hezbollah in 2006, the ISIS and the Saudi-Emirati war against Yemen lauded the Arab Spring 2. Arab Spring failed because the United States and its Western allies did not recognize the sovereignty of the very nations whose democratic aspiration they claimed to support. By the term “democracy,” the United States and its allies refer to political regimes in the region that adhere to their directives and follow their advice irrespective of their national interests or deliberations. The political regimes that follow the American order in the region share one thing in common: their opposition to and animosity toward the Axis of Resistance. This has paralyzed them to express their opinion of their people and condemn the Israeli genocide in the region. Since the stability of these regimes depends on how useful they are for the Axis of Western Domination led by the United States in the region, they cannot do otherwise. Nevertheless, a significant fracture has emerged among the educated Arabs, Iranians, and Turks who have come to the realization that the true essence of the entire Western discourse on democracy, human rights, and women’s rights is genocide. The fact that Israel has been committing genocide against the Palestinian people with the direct assistance of Western governments and their media, in violation of the Genocide Convention, makes the latter an accomplice in the Israeli genocide. As per article III of the Genocide Convention, both the act of committing and complicity in genocide are punishable offenses. According to article IV: “Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.”

With Israeli genocide and the unconditional support of all the members of the Axis of Western Domination led by the United States in West Asia, this Axis has been turned into an Axis of Genocide. It is noteworthy that all members of this supported the ‘new revolution’ in Iran. Israel was the most prominent sponsor of the fascist riots, with which Norway had the illusion of competing through the 2023 Nobel Prize. From 2001 to 2011, the Axis of Western Domination bombed any state or nation that hesitated to accept their submission peacefully, provided they were defenseless. They bombed and invaded Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya because they realized that these states and nations were defenseless. Due to the failure of the Axis of Western Domination in the region to subjugate Hezbollah, Syria, and Ansarullah through the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006, the terrorist campaigns against Syria since 2011, and the Saudi-Emirati war against Yemen since 2015, the Axis of the Resistance has been formed. The Iraqi Popular Mobilization, whose main components emerged as a response to the American occupation of Iraq in 2003, joined the Axis of Resistance to fight the Western-Israeli phenomenon known as ISIS in Iraq and Syria. ISIS succeeded in controlling large parts of these two countries in 2014 through acts of genocide against all those they deemed to be unbelievers, especially Shia Muslims. Western governments and Israel hoped that an ISIS Khalifat in Syria and Iraq would end Iranian political influence in these two countries, which they viewed as a bridge to Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is the same story with Ansarullah, who were ruling the 80% of the Yemeni population. Saudi Arabia and its Western and regional backers accused Ansarullah of being an Iranian proxy but failed to defeat it after a decade. The Western backed Saudi-Emirati war against the Ansarullah movement made the movement stronger and its ties with Iran friendlier because Iran was the only state that supported them against foreign powers politically, economically and militarily. Hamas and Islamic Jihad joined the Axis of Resistance because they realized that the Axis was the only political and military force they could rely on to free Palestine from Israeli occupation. What is common between the Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi and Syrian and Yemeni and Palestinian experience is that they had to defend their sovereignty against states and terrorist organizations that were supported by the United States, other Western governments and Israel. The Axis of Resistance is not a result of the decisions made by governments, but rather a result of the convergence of states and movements that have been fighting for their sovereignty and independence from the former Axis of Western Domination and the current Axis of Genocide in the region for several decades. Iran learned from its experience fighting alone against an enemy who had the support of Western powers in the 1980s that it was important to form an alliance against Western intervention in the West Asia region. This is why, while trapped in a devastating war, Iran helped the formation of Hezbollah, which has become the most effective resistance organization against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon since the 1980s. Iran went on to support Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which started their Armed Struggle in the 1980s and 1990s, and at the same time supported Islamic and anti-imperialist forces in Iraq and Yemen, which are now known as the Yemeni Ansarullah and Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

Each member of the Axis of Resistance has experienced the impacts of the Axis of Western Domination in their own country and in the region, and their actual resistance against such impacts has qualified them as constituting components of the Axis of Resistance. This is why each member of the Resistance raises the universalizing character of the Axis. If the slogan “one for all and all for one” has any meaning, it can be found in the practice and experiences of solidarity of the Axis of Resistance. While the Axis of Resistance was forming against the forces of Western Domination in the region, including Israel, not only Arab autocracies and Turkey, but also an army of native informers posing as academics and journalists argued that the people of the region could escape from the suffering of imperialist injustice if they are accustomed to it and contributed to its continuity. The terms of acceptance of imperialist injustice in the region and of contributing to its continuity were democracy, human rights, and women’s rights or moderation.

While Turkey represented democracy, human rights, and women’s rights for a while, especially during the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia represented moderation. Therefore, the entire discourse regarding the politics of West Asia oscillated between moderation and democracy.

Although numerous scholars promoted Turkey while advocating for the objective of ‘Making Islam Democratic,’ the responsibility of promoting Saudi Arabia was delegated to Thomas Friedman and his like-minded people. The result was a fierce competition between the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Turkey for the consolidation of American hegemony in the region and for the normalization of Israeli apartheid in occupied Palestine. These leaders believed that their contribution to the imperialist injustice in the region and their collaboration with the Axis of Western Domination would safeguard them from harsh treatment in the ongoing injustice.

The efforts to make themselves a darling of the imperialist dominance in the region might explain the animosity of the imperialist clients against Iran and the Axis of Resistance expressed in their countless English and Arabic media outlets. A glance at the seemingly progressive and reliable outlets such as Aljazeera and Jadaliyya, Middle East Eye, and TRT will reveal the extent of their anti-resistance and anti-Iranian posture, not to mention the media owned by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The majority of regional analysts appearing in these media outlets appear to be pro-Palestinian. Convinced of the enduring nature of the dominance of Western imperialism, led by the United States in the region, they refer to the members of the Axis of Resistance as the “proxies of the Iranian regime” to remind their audience of the temporary nature of the Iranian state. It appears that these analysts are unaware of the fact that all small and large Western governments constitute the primary obstacle to Palestinian liberation in any meaningful manner. These outlets do not mention that Iran has been subject to murderous economic sanctions for several decades because of its loyalty to its allies in the Axis of Resistance. While the Saudi-Emirati war against Ansarullah was supported by all Western governments, Iran was the only state to support the Ansarullah movement. Iran has provided support to the Yemeni Ansarullah, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Force, the Palestinian freedom fighters such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as the Syrian government, as they all represent forces of sovereignty who defend their independence and freedom from Western dominance.

The United States and its Western allies have imposed economic sanctions on Iran due to their assertion that it has committed three unforgivable sins. They claim that Iran interferes with the affairs of other countries in the region, which implies that Iran does not accept the rulers imposed by the United States on the region. Thus, it supports forces that resist American interference in the region. According to American rules in the region, Palestinians must be prevented from fighting for their rights and for their liberation from Israeli bondage, and that Israel must preserve its military and technological supremacy regardless of the costs for other states and nations in the region. Iran not only regards Israel as an illegal state in the region that needs to be dismantled, but it also seeks to end American omnipotence and tyrannical power in the region, since it is the United States and its allies that allow Israel to commit genocide against the Palestinian and Lebanese people with impunity. According to American rule, Saudi Arabia on behalf of the United States should determine who should govern in Yemen, something Iran rejects and says that every state and nation must be the master of its own destiny. The second reason Iran is the target of American and Western sanctions is its advancing military technology, especially its advanced missile program, which the United States and other Western powers want to be dismantled. The real meaning of this Western demand is that Iran ceases its missile program and disarms itself so that it would not be able to reach enemy targets beyond its borders. This makes it easier for the United States and its allies to wage war against it. Iran not only succeeded in developing its military technology and accomplishing advanced missile and drone programs to secure its territorial integrity and national sovereignty against American threats, but it also succeeded in boosting the military technology of its allies in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Palestinians to be more effective against the Axis of Western Domination and Genocide in the region. Ultimately, Iran has been subjected to demonization and economic sanctions and has become a target of Israeli terrorism due to its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. The United States wants Iran to prove that it is not seeking nuclear weapons in return for easing economic sanctions against it. According to this American logic, it is not the accuser who must demonstrate through the presentation of evidence that the accused has committed a wrong, but rather the accused who must demonstrate against evidence that is not present that he or she has not committed the wrong. To satisfy the American demand and demonstrate that Iran has no intention of making nuclear weapons, Iran must dismantle its entire nuclear program and refrain from developing nuclear technology. Iran does not accept this because it is a violation of its national sovereignty. Furthermore, Iran does not wish to be deprived of all options whenever it encounters an existential threat from either Israel or the United States. Therefore, it possesses all the necessary technology to produce nuclear weapons; however, it refrains from producing such weapons as it is not currently confronting an existential threat. Recently, Iranians are reminding Western powers that if they create a threatening condition for Iran, Iranians may reconsider their nuclear policy in a matter of days.

The rationale behind the economic sanctions, media war and regime change projects against Iran was that such measures would either install a Western friendly regime or convince Iran to change its behavior and give up its sovereignty. The United States and its allies were hoping that, even if all regime-change attempts and attempts to change Iran’s behavior fail, it would become so fragile that it could not hold the Axis of Resistance together and assist its allies in the region when they needed it most. Despite economic sanctions and technological embargo imposed by the Axis of Domination and Genocide in the region on Iran, Iran has proved to be more economically prosperous, technologically advanced, ideologically and politically influential, and militarily stronger than anticipated. Iran not only helped the Axis of Resistance economically and militarily, but also helped them achieve a high degree of technological sophistication and military self-sufficiency that no power could take from them, despite its own economic difficulties. Every member of the Axis was convinced by this that Iran believes in their talent and strength and wants them to be strong, self-sufficient, dignified, sovereign and equal members of the Axis. It suffices to compare the reverence of the Iranian leaders to that of Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, with the contemptuous treatment of Saad Hariri, the former Prime-Minister of Lebanon, by the leaders of Saudi Arabia. Iran and Saudi Arabia have treated these two Lebanese political leaders differently, demonstrating who is considered a sovereign ally and who is a dependent proxy.

Iran comprehends that in the event that the Axis of Domination and Genocide defeats the apparent weaker links within the Axis, it will not be content with anything less than Iran’s complete surrender. Imperial agents and their native informers interpreted almost every Western aggression or any Western political project as a means of regime change in Iran. This included the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Israeli War on Lebanon, the Arab Spring, and finally the fascist riots in Iran. The fascist riots in Iran, entitled Woman, Life, Freedom, were the last misinformation and disinformation attempt by the imperialist agents and their native informers. They created the illusion for Western governments, as their employers, that Iran was on the brink of collapse and would be forced to submit to American conditions in the region. These imperialist agents and their native informers, who have been functioning as academics, journalists, political activists, and NGO activists, have failed miserably in their last attempt. All the efforts carried out by these imperialist agents and native informers who have constructed religious, political, ethnic, and gender divisions in West Asia have been guided by the principle of divide and rule. They explained that political and economic underdevelopment, conflicts, and wars in the region were related to these divisions. These epistemological assumptions serve as a guideline for Western media and pro-Western media in the West and the region, but they also serve as a point of departure for social scientists and historians in the region. What follows from the knowledge produced based on these epistemological assumptions requires the active intervention of Western governments in the region. Western governments thus finance, initiate, and establish organizations which call themselves non-governmental organizations as instruments of interference in the social and political affairs of various societies in the region. Without the financial support of their government, Western NGOs in the region will disappear. This indicates that non-governmental organizations serve to divert the local populace from the fact that Western imperialism and Western elite are the main responsible for the social, religious, and political divisions and conflicts in the region.

Since unity, solidarity, and fraternity in the region challenge American imperialism regionally and globally, movements that promise unity, solidarity, and fraternity in the region are designed as Iranian proxies that conspire against peace and stability in the region. The imperialist agents and native informers who accuse Iran of interfering in Iraqi affairs never mention the fact that the United States has taken Iraq’s entire oil revenue hostage to impose its will on the Iraqi state. The United States and its Western allies use every political means, terrorism, mass murder and even genocide to reshape the region according to their insatiable interests. Naturally, the imperialist agents and their native informers become preoccupied with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, expansion, and influence, as well as its proxies, as the main causes of political disputes and social conflicts in the region. The anti-government and anti-corruption demonstrations in Iraq and Lebanon during the period of 2019-2020 were referred to as the Arab Spring 2 by the imperialist agents and their native informers, as they turned anti-Iran and anti-Hezbollah.

The Struggle for Sovereignty

Iran managed to build and strengthen a regional front known as the Axis of Resistance against the alliance of the Axis of Domination and Genocide, while every regional analyst believed that the collective West and Israel were going to shape the West Asia region according to their own security and economic interests. In his last speech, Iran’s leader said that the only reason the U.S. and other Western powers support the Israeli apartheid regime is because it lets them control the natural resources of the region. He explained that by controlling the region’s resources, the West, led by the United States, would be more confident in their future conflicts with other world powers such as China and Russia. Western powers have become the accomplices of the Israeli genocide because not only their security and economic interests, but their supremacist attitude toward non-Westerners is indistinguishable from those of the Israeli regime, according to Iran’s leader. This is the reason why, rather than focusing on the racist and genocidal nature of the Israeli regime, the Western media places emphasis on its military might and portrays it as the most powerful entity in the region. According to the leader of Iran, the combination of Israel’s fictitious military might with the American aspiration of transforming this regime of apartheid and genocide into a hub for both energy export from the region to the West and for importing Western products and technology to the region prompted several regimes in the region to normalize their relations with this regime. But the Palestinians and other members of the Axis of Resistance are fighting for their freedom and independence from Israeli and American dominance in the region, which has turned this Western dream into a nightmare.

Iran was, in fact, the first member of this resistance and was able to anticipate its formation since the 1979 revolution. The Iranian revolution transformed the country from a client of American imperialism into a sovereign and self-governing state. According to the section on foreign policy of the constitution of this sovereign state specified in articles 152, 153, and 154, Iranian governments have a duty to reject any forms of imperialist domination or interference in Iranian internal politics. Moreover, it obligates the Iranian governments to demonstrate active solidarity with all nations that oppose imperialist dominance and interference in their internal affairs. Here, the key concept is the sovereign right of nations and states to shape their societies according to their own will, aspirations, ideas, deliberations, and decisions. According to Article 152 of the Iranian constitution, The Islamic Republic of Iran is mandated to reject any form of foreign dominance within its territory, to preserve its independence and territorial integrity, and to defend the rights of all Muslims and the oppressed peoples of the world against superpowers. Article 153 prohibits any agreements that give any form of foreign control over the Iranian natural resources, economy, army, or culture. Finally, according to the Article 154, “The ideal of the Islamic Republic of Iran is independence, justice, truth, and felicity among all people of the world. Accordingly, it[the Islamic Republic] supports the just struggles of the Mustad’afun (oppressed) against the Mustakbirun (oppressors) in every corner of the globe.” During the first year of the revolution in Iran, there was a universal consensus among all revolutionary tendencies on these ideals declared by the Iranian Constitution. These articles of the Iranian constitutions are the guiding lines of the Iranian struggle to defend its state sovereignty and to support other nations in their struggles for sovereignty and independence from imperialist powers. Iran has supported the Palestinian struggle for liberation from Israeli apartheid for the same reason it supported South African struggles against apartheid. Iran stands in solidarity with Hezbollah, the Syrian government, Yemeni Ansarullah, and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces as they fight for the same independence and sovereignty that it enjoys itself. Iranian independence and sovereignty prevent it from joining the Axis of Western Domination and Genocide in the region. Iran is aware that without aiding and defending the sovereignty of others, it is unable to safeguard its own sovereignty. For a long time, the imperialist agents and their native informers have argued that the Iranian nation does not endorse Iran’s interventions in Western imperialist affairs in the region. However, recent opinion polls conducted by imperialist agents and their native informers indicate that, the majority of Iranians “are invested in the idea of providing military support to Iran’s proxy groups in the Middle East, the so-called “Axis of Resistance” (Jebhe Moqavemat). Sixty percent are in favor of this policy and 31 percent are against it.”  Western governments’ academic and media mouthpieces accuse Iran for two contradictory reasons. They blame Iran for using its financial resources to assist and empower its proxies who cause instability in the region instead of using those resources to elevate the prosperity of its own people or accuse it of using other members of the Axis of Resistance for its own interests. While the first claim assumes Iran to be a nefarious but a rational and pragmatic player in the region, the latter claim assumes Iran to be an ideological, fanatic and dogmatic actor. Iran must be contained, moderated, or subject to constant demonization, economic sanctions, terrorism, and regime change since it is the cause of instability in both cases. However, despite the numerous criminal plots against the Iranian state and nation since the revolution, Iran has steadfastly upheld the revolutionary principles of sovereignty and independence against Western imperialism and demonstrated genuine solidarity with the oppressed people who fight for their own sovereignty and independence.

Even though the Soviet Union collapsed, which made the United States the global sovereign or consolidated its global hegemony, supported and facilitated by its various Western allies and regional clients, and to which Russia and other members of the former socialist block in Europe and Central Asia surrendered, Iran did not relinquish its sovereignty and independence. Iran faced two choices: either surrender to American global hegemony and its “new world order” or face American wrath in the form of regime change or land invasion, as it happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya and Syria. Iran realized that it was impossible to protect its own sovereignty without promoting the principle of sovereignty and practicing a genuine practice of solidarity with all forces that resisted American domination and Israeli aggression in West Asia.

This is how the Axis of Resistance as we know it today came into being.  Iranians had to resist not only the military, economic, and political consequences of American global dominance in the region, but also the circulation of its ideology by contemporary political philosophers, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, who theorize, justify, and normalize the American order. The Aristotelian theory of rulership and governance is at the heart of the new world order. According to this theory, the soul, composed of the rational and expedient components of the world, is destined to reign over the physical, passionate, and natural components of the world. The American world order ideology assumes that the West, led by the U.S., represents the former and the rest of the world represents the latter in the contemporary world. This theory argues that the United States and its allies represent the human elements that must rule the animal elements of the world because both men and animals are better off when animals are tamed and ruled by men. This theory assumes that, since it is always the superior who discovers this principle of ruling, he must make sure that the inferiors understand this principle. This theory makes the inferior believe that he is a slave who must obey the superior as his master and execute his orders unquestionably. According to this principle of rulership, while the task of the slave is the administration of things and production of the necessities of life, the task of the master is the administration of the slaves. Russia, which consented to being administered by the West, led by the United States, attempted to fulfill the duties of a slave and fulfill the master’s demands, however, it was unsuccessful. However, China, which has achieved great success in the administration of things and production of necessities of life, has come to the realization that as a nation, they have high expectations and desire to safeguard their sovereignty and independence. At the same time, Russia realized that their success in the administration of things and the production of the necessities of life depended on them protecting their sovereignty and independence from Western interventions in the affairs of their nation. Aristotle advised superior men to do philosophy and politics because they were the kind of science that enable the superior to command the slave who produces the necessities of life. Modern imperialism, from an Aristotelian perspective, would not be possible without modern philosophy, social sciences and humanities that have persuaded the rest of the world of their inferiority. As Aristotle argued that plants exist for the sake of animals, and animals exist for the sake of men, and the slave exist for the sake of the master, modern human and social sciences argue that non-Westerners exist for the sake of Westerners. Imperial agents and their native informers are practitioners of the social and human sciences, whose failure to convince the inferior people of their inferiority could result in the inferior people refusing to be governed by their superiors. When this occurs, the Americans and their Western allies attempt to coerce the inferior populace into submission by means of economic sanctions, intimidation, and threats. Whenever these measures fail, and the superior Westerners find the inferior people defenseless, they turn into wild beasts by indiscriminate killing of civilians, murdering babies, women, and elderly people, and destroying their homes. The Israeli Genocide of Palestinian and Lebanese people is the last example of such crimes.  While the United States, with the help of its Western allies, attempts to dominate the world by demonstrating Western superiority and the inferiority of the rest of the world, Israel fails to dominate West Asia despite all the political, economic and military help it receives from America and Europe. In 2006, Israel attempted to replicate what the United States and its Western allies accomplished in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, but it fell short. Since the so-called Arab Spring, the United States and Israel have worked together to kill as many Libyan, Syrian, Yemeni people as they can and destroy as much of their infrastructure as they can because according to the imperialist principle, the superiors can either subjugate the inferiors or destroy them. However, Iranian revolutionary foreign policy has rejected this Western superiority complex and has tried to minimize its political consequences in the region. Iran has been trying to convince the people of the region that their struggle for sovereignty and independence from imperialist domination is impossible without the formation of a united front to resist American and Western intervention in the region. From an Iranian perspective, the resistance against the imperialist dominance in the region is intrinsically linked to the Palestinian struggle for liberation from the Israeli occupation. Iran supports the Palestinian struggle for sovereignty and independence, as an unfree Palestine would make the future of its own sovereignty and independence uncertain. Because an unfree Palestine means supremacy of the Western Axis of Domination and Genocide in the region. This may explain the moral high ground held by Iran when it comes to the Israeli genocide and its Western and regional accomplices.

According to Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, book VIII, it is with friends that men are more able to think and to act because the impacts of friendship are so significant that it can hold states together. Whereas men with friends do not have a need for justice, just men need friendship because justice has a friendly quality. But true friendship is about reciprocal goodwill, since friends wish what is good for one another for their own sake. It is the mutual recognition of goodwill between people that makes them friends. According to Aristotle, there are people who love each other for their utility and in virtue of some good which they get from each other. There are also those who love for the sake of pleasure because they find each other pleasant. Hence, those who love others for the purpose of their utility, do so for the sake of their own well-being, whereas those who love for the sake of pleasure do so for the sake of their own pleasure. If the parties don’t stay what they are to each other, their friendship will be easily broken up. For instance, when an individual ceases to be pleasant or useful to the other, the latter ceases to love them. Friendship is perfect when men are good and equal because they wish well for their friends for their own sake. Such friendships last as long as the parties remain good, and goodness is a lasting thing. Friendships such as these are not instrumental because they are not based on how useful friends are to each other. Since true friendship is rare and infrequent, it requires time and familiarity. The imperialist agents and their native informers fail to understand that Iran and the Axis of Resistance are the only true friends in Asia because they founded their friendship on mutual recognition of their sovereignty, equality, and struggle for justice. The familiarity with such virtues in each other took time, but the time was not wasted. The time was used to discover what is good in each other.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yadullah Shahibzadeh.

One of the chief prosecutors of sanctions against Moscow was initially confident about the damage that would be caused by economic bludgeoning.  US President Joe Biden, in February 2022, insisted on the imposition of measures that would “impair [Russia’s] ability to compete in a high-tech 21^st century economy.”  The Council of the European Union also explained that the move was intended to weaken Moscow’s “ability to finance the war and specifically target the political, military and economic elite responsible for the invasion [of Ukraine].”

In all this, the European Union, the United States and other governments have ignored a salient historical lesson when resorting to supposedly punitive formulae intended to either deter Russia from pursuing a course of action or depriving it of necessary resources.  States subject to supposedly crushing economic measures can adapt, showing streaks of impressive resilience.  The response from Japan, Germany and Italy during the 1930s in the face of sanctions imposed by the League of Nations provide irrefutable proof of that proposition.  All, to a certain extent, pursued what came to be known as Blockadefestigkeit, or blockade resilience.  With bitter irony, the targeted powers also felt emboldened to pursue even more aggressive measures to subvert the restraints placed upon them.

By the end of 2022, Russia had become China’s second biggest supplier of Russian crude oil.  India has also been particularly hungry for Russian oil.  Producing only 10% of domestic supply, Russia contributed 34% of the rest of Indian oil consumption in 2023.

Trade routes are also being pursued with greater vigour than ever.  This year, progress was made between Russia and China on a North Sea Route, which straddles the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, running from Murmansk on the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait and the Far East.  The agreement between Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom and China’s Hainan Yangpu Newnew Shipping Co Ltd envisages the joint design and creation of Arctic-class container vessels to cope with the punishing conditions throughout the year.  Rosatom’s special representative for Arctic development, Vladimir Panov, confidently declared that up to 3 million tonnes of transit cargo would flow along the NSR in 2024.

While that agreement will operate to Russia’s frozen north, another transport route has also received a boosting tonic.  Of late, Moscow and New Delhi have been making progress on the 7,200-kilometre International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which will run from St. Petersburg in northwestern Russia to ports in southern Iran for onward movement to Mumbai.  While the agreement between Russia, Iran and India for such a multimodal corridor dates back to September 2000, the advent of sanctions imposed in the aftermath of the Ukraine War propelled Moscow to seek succour in the export markets of the Middle East and Asia.

As staff writers at Nikkei point out, the shipping route will not only bypass Europe but be “less than half as long as the current standard path through the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal.”  One calculation suggests that the time needed to transport cargo to Moscow from Mumbai prior to the initiation of the corridor was between 40 and 60 days.  As things stand, the transit time has been shaved to 25-30 days, with transportation costs falling by 30%.

Much progress has been made on the western route, which involves the use of Azerbaijan’s rail and road facilities.  In March, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Digital Development and Transport revealed that rail freight grew by approximately 30% in 2023.  Road freight rose to 1.3 million tonnes, an increase of 35%.  The ministry anticipates the amount of tonnage in terms of freight traffic to rise to 30 million per year.  In June this year, the Rasht-Caspian Sea link connecting the Persian Gulf with the Caspian Sea via rail was opened in the presence of Russian, Iranian and Azerbaijani dignitaries.

A further factor that adds worth to the corridor is the increasingly fraught nature of freight traffic from Europe to Asia via the Suez Canal.  Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have been harrying vessels in the Red Sea, a response to Israel’s ferocious campaign in Gaza.  Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk suggested back in January that the “North-South [corridor] will gain global significance” given the crisis in the Red Sea.

Despite the frightful losses being endured in the Russia-Ukraine war, it is clear, at least when it comes to using economic and financial weapons, that Moscow has prevailed.  It has outfoxed its opponents, and, along the way, sought to redraw global trade routes that will furnish it with even greater armour from future economic shocks.  Other countries less keen to seek a moral stake in the Ukraine conflict than pursue their own trade interests, have been most enthusiastic.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington, where he will deliver a speech to Congress on Wednesday, the Israeli military massacred Palestinians throughout Gaza and forced a new wave of mass displacement in the south of the territory.

The World Health Organization meanwhile warned that there was a high risk of the polio virus spreading within and beyond Gaza due to the public health crisis borne of Israel’s destruction and siege.

The highly infectious virus, mainly affecting children under the age of 5, “can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis,” according to Reuters.

“There is a high risk of spreading of the circulating vaccine-derived polio virus in Gaza, not only because of the detection but because of the very dire situation with the water sanitation,” Ayadil Saparbekov, an official with WHO, said on Tuesday.

“It may also spill over internationally, at a very high point,” Saparbekov added.

WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that “no paralytic cases have been detected” so far in Gaza. Prior to Israel’s current offensive, “polio vaccination rates in Gaza were optimal,” he added.

He warned, however, that the “decimation of the health system” in the territory, as well as the “lack of security, access obstruction, constant population displacement, shortages of medical supplies, poor quality of water and weakened sanitation are increasing the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio.”

A group of Israeli public health professors called for a ceasefire to allow for a “multi-pronged, coordinated and comprehensive” response to stop the disease from spreading, with babies in Gaza and Israel who have not completed their vaccinations at greatest risk.

The detection of remnants of the polio virus in sewage samples tested in Gaza is only the latest indicator of the severe deterioration of public health conditions in the territory.

The catastrophic situation is a predictable if not intentional outcome of Israel’s actions in Gaza. In an op-ed published in Ynet in November, Giora Eiland, a former Israeli military operations chief and head of the National Security Council who is currently serving as an adviser to defense minister Yoav Gallant, called for the deprivation of life essentials in Gaza as a means of biological warfare.

The official death toll in Gaza since 7 October surpassed 39,000 this week, including 16,000 children, though the actual number is likely much higher.

Israeli forces have killed at least 16,000 Palestinian children in Gaza since October 7, according to the latest update from the Governmental Media Office. At least 34 children have starved to death, and the true death toll is feared to be much higher. pic.twitter.com/5SZwYgsL9x

— Defense for Children (@DCIPalestine) July 23, 2024

Thousands of Palestinians remain missing in the rubble or in the streets, or their deaths as a result of secondary mortality such as hunger, thirst and disease resulting from Israel’s military campaign are not reflected in the fatality count.

In a letter published by The Lancet earlier this month, three public health experts conservatively projected “that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”

Death and displacement in Khan Younis

Israeli tanks rolled back into Khan Younis on Monday and at least 70 Palestinians were killed and 200 injured in artillery shelling and airstrikes in the eastern areas of the southern Gaza district.

Israel had ordered nearly half a million Palestinians in parts of Khan Younis to leave the area, “forcing residents to flee under fire,” Reuters reported. One survivor told the news agency that the situation was “like doomsday” with many “dead and wounded on the roads.”

New evacuation orders today in Khan Younis mean more suffering and displacement. Families had to pack what is left of their belongings and run, amid bombardment, and with nowhere safe to go.

People in #Gaza are exhausted, living in inhumane conditions, with no safety at all. pic.twitter.com/LSYTEBxMRM

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 22, 2024

Israel-Gaza: 400,000 residents ordered to leave Khan Younis pic.twitter.com/2XNyyAPK7a

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) July 22, 2024

Nasser Medical Complex, the largest hospital in southern Gaza, struggled to cope with the influx of casualties, warning of dire conditions at the facility and issuing an urgent appeal for blood donations.

The new Israeli orders encompassed part of the so-called “safe zone” that the military had unilaterally declared in al-Mawasi, a coastal area west of Khan Younis where some 1.7 million people displaced from other areas of Gaza are currently concentrated.

This is yet another example of what Special Rapporteur @FranceskAlbs calls ‘humanitarian camouflage’: Israel's use of IHL terminology—such as ‘evacuation orders’ and ‘humanitarian area’—subverting their protective purpose and legitimising genocidal violence in #Gaza. https://t.co/vhwSbCv0Wy

— Al-Mezan ??????? (@AlMezanCenter) July 22, 2024

The new evacuation orders showed the “safe zone” to now be around 50 square kilometers, down from just under 59 square kilometers, reducing the area by some 15 percent.

“As of 22 July, nearly 83 percent of the Gaza Strip has been placed under evacuation orders or designated as ‘no-go zones’ by the Israeli military,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stated.

The office added that the “frequent evacuation orders and relentless hostilities continue to further devastate Gaza’s health system and make it increasingly difficult for repeatedly displaced populations to access essential services, particularly people suffering from chronic diseases.”

Only 60 dialysis machines are available to more than 1,500 patients requiring kidney dialysis in Gaza. “As a result, patients are undertaking only two dialysis sessions of two hours per week, instead of the required treatment of three four-hour sessions a week,” the UN office said.

Meanwhile, only eight partially functioning hospitals and four field hospitals are currently “providing maternal services with more than 500,000 women in reproductive age lacking access to antenatal and postnatal care, family planning and management of sexually transmitted infections,” the UN office added.

Israel tightens vise on Gaza’s north

The UN Human Rights Office condemned the latest displacement of Palestinians in Khan Younis, saying that the new evacuation order “was issued in the context of ongoing attacks … and gave no time for civilians to know from which areas they were required to leave or where they should go.”

“The evacuation order also covered parts of Salah al-Din Road, which has been one of two main routes vital for the transport and distribution of aid,” the UN office added, “raising concerns that delivery and provision of desperately needed humanitarian assistance will be further reduced or prevented.”

The office said that the supposed “safe zone” in al-Mawasi “has little or no infrastructure to support the masses of civilians who have been already displaced there” and has been repeatedly subjected to Israeli artillery fire and airstrikes.

The Israeli military killed at least 90 Palestinians in al-Mawasi on 13 July, in one of the single deadliest incidents in Gaza since October, while claiming to target Hamas’ military chief Muhammad Deif.

The supposed assassination attempt on Mohammed Deif was, as so many Israeli massacres in Gaza are, a test balloon to see how the West would respond to another encroachment on supposed red lines. Now, even the humanitarian zone is getting openly invaded. None of it matters. https://t.co/vYLWgzsDOi

— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) July 22, 2024

Israel launched a ground offensive in Khan Younis earlier this year, ordering residents out of the area and wreaking widespread destruction. At that time, many people fled Khan Younis to Rafah, which came under evacuation orders in early May.

Meanwhile, “the Israeli military is escalating its targeting of all aspects and basic elements of life in the Gaza [City] and North Gaza governorates, in an attempt to render them uninhabitable and force their citizens to evacuate to the southern governorates,” the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said on Saturday.

The group added that on Saturday morning, “the Israeli army opened fire on several women who were cooking and filling water containers in their home” in the Zarqa neighborhood in northern Gaza, killing 28-year-old Noura al-Sabbagh and injuring several others, one critically.

Earlier in the month, on 2 July, 10 Palestinians including a child and a disabled person were killed by Israeli artillery fire while they gathered to fill water containers in al-Zaytoun, south of Gaza City.

And in late June, three Palestinians were killed when Israel attacked a group of vendors in downtown Gaza City, according to the Euro-Med Monitor.

Journalist killed, UN vehicles hit by live fire

Also on Monday, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent used by journalists in the grounds of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killing one and injuring two others. The deadly strike brought the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since 7 October to 163, according to the government media office in the territory.

On Tuesday, two UN-marked vehicles were hit with live fire while waiting at a holding point near a checkpoint in Gaza, causing no casualties.

“They were en route to reunite five children, including a baby, with their father,” said Adele Khodr, a regional director with the UN children’s fund.

“This is the second shooting incident involving UNICEF cars on humanitarian duty in the past 12 weeks and on both occasions, the humanitarian consequences could have been severe, for both our teams and the children they serve,” Khodr added.

On Sunday, Israeli forces opened fire toward a UN convoy heading to Gaza City in the north, piercing a UN-marked armored vehicle carrying UNRWA spokesperson Louise Wateridge five times while it was stopped at a checkpoint, causing no casualties.

#Gaza
Heavy shooting from the Israeli Forces at a UN convoy heading to Gaza city.
While there are no casualties, our teams had to duck and take cover.

This took place yesterday. The teams were traveling in clearly marked UN armoured cars & wearing UN vests.

One vehicle…

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) July 22, 2024

More than 200 UN staff members are among the at least 278 aid workers killed in Gaza since October.

On Monday, a bill declaring UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, to be a terrorist organization passed a first reading in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

Two other bills aimed at preventing UNRWA’s ability to conduct its work already passed the first of three votes required by the Knesset before being enshrined in law.

I am not sure how many other countries have designated through parliamentary law a UN agency as a “terrorist organization” and thus a legitimate military target. This is also the agency that keeps Gaza survivors alive, so genocidal intent is being inscribed in national law. https://t.co/QayABaEBVq

— Nicola Perugini (@PeruginiNic) July 22, 2024

Israel has long sought to shut down the agency, which provides government-like services to millions of Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Several donor countries halted funding to UNRWA in late January after Israel made unsubstantiated allegations that a handful of its staff in Gaza were involved in the 7 October attack led by Hamas.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, warned at the time that countries defunding UNRWA could be doing so in violation of the Genocide Convention.

Yemen

While some countries have defunded UNRWA, the organization with the largest humanitarian footprint in Gaza, groups in Yemen and Lebanon upped the pressure on Israel in their support for the Palestinian people and resistance.

On Sunday, Israel said that it had shot down a missile fired from Yemen, where Ansarullah, the resistance group also known as the Houthis, said it had fired several projectiles toward the port city of Eilat.

Israel bombed the Yemeni port of al-Hudayda on Saturday, killing six people, all of them reportedly civilians, and injuring dozens more, after a drone launched by Ansarullah on Friday hit a building in Tel Aviv, killing one.

Breaching Israel’s air defenses and hitting the heart of Tel Aviv marks a major achievement for the Yemeni armed forces and a severe failure for Israel. It served as a reminder that if a drone fired from some 1,400 miles away could target Israel’s economic capital undetected, then the capabilities of Lebanese resistance group Hizballah are likely to be far more lethal.

The exchange of attacks represents an escalation in the regional spillover from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

For months, Ansarullah has maintained a maritime blockade disrupting global trade to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza.

The US had launched strikes on Yemen in response to the Red Sea blockade but the Israeli attack represents the first direct hit by Tel Aviv in response to Ansar Allah.

The Yemeni strike on Tel Aviv comes after Hizballah pledged to ramp up military deterrence against Israel.

During a speech marking the annual Shia commemoration of Ashura, Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hizballah, threatened to strike areas deeper in Israel than it has previously reached.

“If Israeli tanks come to Lebanon, they will not only have a shortage in tanks but will never have any tanks left,” Nasrallah said.

Following days of deadly strikes in southern Lebanon, Nasrallah said that Hizballah, which has so far carefully calibrated its response to avoid a full military confrontation with Israel, would respond more forcefully than it has in the past if the attacks continued.

“The resistance missiles will target new Israeli settlements that were not targeted before,” he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation in the region and continues to urge all to exercise utmost restraint,” the office of his special envoy for Yemen stated after the exchange of fire between Israel and Ansarullah.

But Amal Saad, an expert on Hizballah, observed that the Houthis – as Ansarullah are also known – “are not constrained in the same way other actors in the Resistance Axis are, nor do they subscribe to the same rules of engagement or red lines as Iran or Hizballah.”

“Their retaliation will potentially target non-military sites in Israel, mirroring Israel’s targeting of civilian infrastructure today,” she said on Saturday.

If #Israel doesn't reach a ceasefire deal soon, it will face significant attacks on several fronts. The "support front" to #Gaza is about to end and is expected to turn into a "full front".

— Elijah J. Magnier ?? (@ejmalrai) July 22, 2024

Important context :#Yemen’s targeting of #TelAviv today is independent of #Hezbollah, which has yet to carry out its own response/retaliation to the three assassinations yesterday.
But, there is also a deeper message being sent to the Israelis, to the effect that the axis is in…

— Hala Jaber (@HalaJaber) July 19, 2024

Israeli captives declared dead

On Monday, Israel declared dead two Israelis, including a Polish dual national, who were taken captive during Hamas’ military operation on 7 October and held in Gaza ever since.

Israeli media reported that bombing by Israel is their most likely cause of death.

Some 120 captives are believed to remain in Gaza after around 100 were released during a week-long truce and prisoner exchange in November.

Around one-third of the captives remaining in Gaza have been declared dead by Israel in absentia.

Netanyahu met with the families of Israelis being held in Gaza while in Washington on Monday, telling them that “the conditions to get them back are ripening, for the simple reason that we are applying very, very strong pressure, very strong, on Hamas.”

According to The Times of Israel, “Netanyahu indicated that he would like more time to squeeze Hamas further in order to improve Israel’s negotiating position.”

That should be understood as Netanyahu wanting more time to massacre Palestinian civilians in the absence of a battlefield victory in order to maximize pressure on Hamas, which seeks guarantees that a truce and exchange of captives would lead to a permanent ceasefire – conditions that the Israeli prime minister rejects.

Mati Dancyg, the son of one of the Israeli men declared dead in absentia on Monday, said that his father Alex “didn’t just die – he died for the sake of [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s government of destruction.”

Dancyg accused Netanyahu of sabotaging “any chance for a deal” in order “to save his rotten government,” adding that the “sacrificing of the hostages out of political motives is a much, much greater failure than the failure of 7 October.”

Noa Argamani – an Israeli woman who was freed by the Israeli military along with three other captives in a raid that killed at least 274 Palestinians – told Netanyahu during a meeting on Monday that those remaining in Gaza “must be brought home as quickly as possible, before it is too late.”

She reportedly told the Israeli prime minister that “the hardest moment I had in captivity was when I listened to the radio and heard you say the war will be long.”

“I thought, ‘I won’t get out of here.’ It was a breaking point for me,” she said, according to Israeli media.

While Netanyahu is expected to meet US President Joe Biden this week, and a delegation from Tel Aviv is due to arrive in Cairo to resume talks on Wednesday evening, a senior Hamas official said that the Israeli prime minister “is still stalling and he is sending delegations only to calm the anger of Israeli captives’ families.”

• Article first published in the Electronic Intifada

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Maureen Clare Murphy.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington, where he will deliver a speech to Congress on Wednesday, the Israeli military massacred Palestinians throughout Gaza and forced a new wave of mass displacement in the south of the territory.

The World Health Organization meanwhile warned that there was a high risk of the polio virus spreading within and beyond Gaza due to the public health crisis borne of Israel’s destruction and siege.

The highly infectious virus, mainly affecting children under the age of 5, “can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis,” according to Reuters.

“There is a high risk of spreading of the circulating vaccine-derived polio virus in Gaza, not only because of the detection but because of the very dire situation with the water sanitation,” Ayadil Saparbekov, an official with WHO, said on Tuesday.

“It may also spill over internationally, at a very high point,” Saparbekov added.

WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that “no paralytic cases have been detected” so far in Gaza. Prior to Israel’s current offensive, “polio vaccination rates in Gaza were optimal,” he added.

He warned, however, that the “decimation of the health system” in the territory, as well as the “lack of security, access obstruction, constant population displacement, shortages of medical supplies, poor quality of water and weakened sanitation are increasing the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio.”

A group of Israeli public health professors called for a ceasefire to allow for a “multi-pronged, coordinated and comprehensive” response to stop the disease from spreading, with babies in Gaza and Israel who have not completed their vaccinations at greatest risk.

The detection of remnants of the polio virus in sewage samples tested in Gaza is only the latest indicator of the severe deterioration of public health conditions in the territory.

The catastrophic situation is a predictable if not intentional outcome of Israel’s actions in Gaza. In an op-ed published in Ynet in November, Giora Eiland, a former Israeli military operations chief and head of the National Security Council who is currently serving as an adviser to defense minister Yoav Gallant, called for the deprivation of life essentials in Gaza as a means of biological warfare.

The official death toll in Gaza since 7 October surpassed 39,000 this week, including 16,000 children, though the actual number is likely much higher.

Israeli forces have killed at least 16,000 Palestinian children in Gaza since October 7, according to the latest update from the Governmental Media Office. At least 34 children have starved to death, and the true death toll is feared to be much higher. pic.twitter.com/5SZwYgsL9x

— Defense for Children (@DCIPalestine) July 23, 2024

Thousands of Palestinians remain missing in the rubble or in the streets, or their deaths as a result of secondary mortality such as hunger, thirst and disease resulting from Israel’s military campaign are not reflected in the fatality count.

In a letter published by The Lancet earlier this month, three public health experts conservatively projected “that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”

Death and displacement in Khan Younis

Israeli tanks rolled back into Khan Younis on Monday and at least 70 Palestinians were killed and 200 injured in artillery shelling and airstrikes in the eastern areas of the southern Gaza district.

Israel had ordered nearly half a million Palestinians in parts of Khan Younis to leave the area, “forcing residents to flee under fire,” Reuters reported. One survivor told the news agency that the situation was “like doomsday” with many “dead and wounded on the roads.”

New evacuation orders today in Khan Younis mean more suffering and displacement. Families had to pack what is left of their belongings and run, amid bombardment, and with nowhere safe to go.

People in #Gaza are exhausted, living in inhumane conditions, with no safety at all. pic.twitter.com/LSYTEBxMRM

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 22, 2024

Israel-Gaza: 400,000 residents ordered to leave Khan Younis pic.twitter.com/2XNyyAPK7a

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) July 22, 2024

Nasser Medical Complex, the largest hospital in southern Gaza, struggled to cope with the influx of casualties, warning of dire conditions at the facility and issuing an urgent appeal for blood donations.

The new Israeli orders encompassed part of the so-called “safe zone” that the military had unilaterally declared in al-Mawasi, a coastal area west of Khan Younis where some 1.7 million people displaced from other areas of Gaza are currently concentrated.

This is yet another example of what Special Rapporteur @FranceskAlbs calls ‘humanitarian camouflage’: Israel's use of IHL terminology—such as ‘evacuation orders’ and ‘humanitarian area’—subverting their protective purpose and legitimising genocidal violence in #Gaza. https://t.co/vhwSbCv0Wy

— Al-Mezan ??????? (@AlMezanCenter) July 22, 2024

The new evacuation orders showed the “safe zone” to now be around 50 square kilometers, down from just under 59 square kilometers, reducing the area by some 15 percent.

“As of 22 July, nearly 83 percent of the Gaza Strip has been placed under evacuation orders or designated as ‘no-go zones’ by the Israeli military,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stated.

The office added that the “frequent evacuation orders and relentless hostilities continue to further devastate Gaza’s health system and make it increasingly difficult for repeatedly displaced populations to access essential services, particularly people suffering from chronic diseases.”

Only 60 dialysis machines are available to more than 1,500 patients requiring kidney dialysis in Gaza. “As a result, patients are undertaking only two dialysis sessions of two hours per week, instead of the required treatment of three four-hour sessions a week,” the UN office said.

Meanwhile, only eight partially functioning hospitals and four field hospitals are currently “providing maternal services with more than 500,000 women in reproductive age lacking access to antenatal and postnatal care, family planning and management of sexually transmitted infections,” the UN office added.

Israel tightens vise on Gaza’s north

The UN Human Rights Office condemned the latest displacement of Palestinians in Khan Younis, saying that the new evacuation order “was issued in the context of ongoing attacks … and gave no time for civilians to know from which areas they were required to leave or where they should go.”

“The evacuation order also covered parts of Salah al-Din Road, which has been one of two main routes vital for the transport and distribution of aid,” the UN office added, “raising concerns that delivery and provision of desperately needed humanitarian assistance will be further reduced or prevented.”

The office said that the supposed “safe zone” in al-Mawasi “has little or no infrastructure to support the masses of civilians who have been already displaced there” and has been repeatedly subjected to Israeli artillery fire and airstrikes.

The Israeli military killed at least 90 Palestinians in al-Mawasi on 13 July, in one of the single deadliest incidents in Gaza since October, while claiming to target Hamas’ military chief Muhammad Deif.

The supposed assassination attempt on Mohammed Deif was, as so many Israeli massacres in Gaza are, a test balloon to see how the West would respond to another encroachment on supposed red lines. Now, even the humanitarian zone is getting openly invaded. None of it matters. https://t.co/vYLWgzsDOi

— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) July 22, 2024

Israel launched a ground offensive in Khan Younis earlier this year, ordering residents out of the area and wreaking widespread destruction. At that time, many people fled Khan Younis to Rafah, which came under evacuation orders in early May.

Meanwhile, “the Israeli military is escalating its targeting of all aspects and basic elements of life in the Gaza [City] and North Gaza governorates, in an attempt to render them uninhabitable and force their citizens to evacuate to the southern governorates,” the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said on Saturday.

The group added that on Saturday morning, “the Israeli army opened fire on several women who were cooking and filling water containers in their home” in the Zarqa neighborhood in northern Gaza, killing 28-year-old Noura al-Sabbagh and injuring several others, one critically.

Earlier in the month, on 2 July, 10 Palestinians including a child and a disabled person were killed by Israeli artillery fire while they gathered to fill water containers in al-Zaytoun, south of Gaza City.

And in late June, three Palestinians were killed when Israel attacked a group of vendors in downtown Gaza City, according to the Euro-Med Monitor.

Journalist killed, UN vehicles hit by live fire

Also on Monday, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent used by journalists in the grounds of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killing one and injuring two others. The deadly strike brought the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since 7 October to 163, according to the government media office in the territory.

On Tuesday, two UN-marked vehicles were hit with live fire while waiting at a holding point near a checkpoint in Gaza, causing no casualties.

“They were en route to reunite five children, including a baby, with their father,” said Adele Khodr, a regional director with the UN children’s fund.

“This is the second shooting incident involving UNICEF cars on humanitarian duty in the past 12 weeks and on both occasions, the humanitarian consequences could have been severe, for both our teams and the children they serve,” Khodr added.

On Sunday, Israeli forces opened fire toward a UN convoy heading to Gaza City in the north, piercing a UN-marked armored vehicle carrying UNRWA spokesperson Louise Wateridge five times while it was stopped at a checkpoint, causing no casualties.

#Gaza
Heavy shooting from the Israeli Forces at a UN convoy heading to Gaza city.
While there are no casualties, our teams had to duck and take cover.

This took place yesterday. The teams were traveling in clearly marked UN armoured cars & wearing UN vests.

One vehicle…

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) July 22, 2024

More than 200 UN staff members are among the at least 278 aid workers killed in Gaza since October.

On Monday, a bill declaring UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, to be a terrorist organization passed a first reading in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

Two other bills aimed at preventing UNRWA’s ability to conduct its work already passed the first of three votes required by the Knesset before being enshrined in law.

I am not sure how many other countries have designated through parliamentary law a UN agency as a “terrorist organization” and thus a legitimate military target. This is also the agency that keeps Gaza survivors alive, so genocidal intent is being inscribed in national law. https://t.co/QayABaEBVq

— Nicola Perugini (@PeruginiNic) July 22, 2024

Israel has long sought to shut down the agency, which provides government-like services to millions of Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Several donor countries halted funding to UNRWA in late January after Israel made unsubstantiated allegations that a handful of its staff in Gaza were involved in the 7 October attack led by Hamas.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, warned at the time that countries defunding UNRWA could be doing so in violation of the Genocide Convention.

Yemen

While some countries have defunded UNRWA, the organization with the largest humanitarian footprint in Gaza, groups in Yemen and Lebanon upped the pressure on Israel in their support for the Palestinian people and resistance.

On Sunday, Israel said that it had shot down a missile fired from Yemen, where Ansarullah, the resistance group also known as the Houthis, said it had fired several projectiles toward the port city of Eilat.

Israel bombed the Yemeni port of al-Hudayda on Saturday, killing six people, all of them reportedly civilians, and injuring dozens more, after a drone launched by Ansarullah on Friday hit a building in Tel Aviv, killing one.

Breaching Israel’s air defenses and hitting the heart of Tel Aviv marks a major achievement for the Yemeni armed forces and a severe failure for Israel. It served as a reminder that if a drone fired from some 1,400 miles away could target Israel’s economic capital undetected, then the capabilities of Lebanese resistance group Hizballah are likely to be far more lethal.

The exchange of attacks represents an escalation in the regional spillover from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

For months, Ansarullah has maintained a maritime blockade disrupting global trade to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza.

The US had launched strikes on Yemen in response to the Red Sea blockade but the Israeli attack represents the first direct hit by Tel Aviv in response to Ansar Allah.

The Yemeni strike on Tel Aviv comes after Hizballah pledged to ramp up military deterrence against Israel.

During a speech marking the annual Shia commemoration of Ashura, Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hizballah, threatened to strike areas deeper in Israel than it has previously reached.

“If Israeli tanks come to Lebanon, they will not only have a shortage in tanks but will never have any tanks left,” Nasrallah said.

Following days of deadly strikes in southern Lebanon, Nasrallah said that Hizballah, which has so far carefully calibrated its response to avoid a full military confrontation with Israel, would respond more forcefully than it has in the past if the attacks continued.

“The resistance missiles will target new Israeli settlements that were not targeted before,” he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation in the region and continues to urge all to exercise utmost restraint,” the office of his special envoy for Yemen stated after the exchange of fire between Israel and Ansarullah.

But Amal Saad, an expert on Hizballah, observed that the Houthis – as Ansarullah are also known – “are not constrained in the same way other actors in the Resistance Axis are, nor do they subscribe to the same rules of engagement or red lines as Iran or Hizballah.”

“Their retaliation will potentially target non-military sites in Israel, mirroring Israel’s targeting of civilian infrastructure today,” she said on Saturday.

If #Israel doesn't reach a ceasefire deal soon, it will face significant attacks on several fronts. The "support front" to #Gaza is about to end and is expected to turn into a "full front".

— Elijah J. Magnier ?? (@ejmalrai) July 22, 2024

Important context :#Yemen’s targeting of #TelAviv today is independent of #Hezbollah, which has yet to carry out its own response/retaliation to the three assassinations yesterday.
But, there is also a deeper message being sent to the Israelis, to the effect that the axis is in…

— Hala Jaber (@HalaJaber) July 19, 2024

Israeli captives declared dead

On Monday, Israel declared dead two Israelis, including a Polish dual national, who were taken captive during Hamas’ military operation on 7 October and held in Gaza ever since.

Israeli media reported that bombing by Israel is their most likely cause of death.

Some 120 captives are believed to remain in Gaza after around 100 were released during a week-long truce and prisoner exchange in November.

Around one-third of the captives remaining in Gaza have been declared dead by Israel in absentia.

Netanyahu met with the families of Israelis being held in Gaza while in Washington on Monday, telling them that “the conditions to get them back are ripening, for the simple reason that we are applying very, very strong pressure, very strong, on Hamas.”

According to The Times of Israel, “Netanyahu indicated that he would like more time to squeeze Hamas further in order to improve Israel’s negotiating position.”

That should be understood as Netanyahu wanting more time to massacre Palestinian civilians in the absence of a battlefield victory in order to maximize pressure on Hamas, which seeks guarantees that a truce and exchange of captives would lead to a permanent ceasefire – conditions that the Israeli prime minister rejects.

Mati Dancyg, the son of one of the Israeli men declared dead in absentia on Monday, said that his father Alex “didn’t just die – he died for the sake of [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s government of destruction.”

Dancyg accused Netanyahu of sabotaging “any chance for a deal” in order “to save his rotten government,” adding that the “sacrificing of the hostages out of political motives is a much, much greater failure than the failure of 7 October.”

Noa Argamani – an Israeli woman who was freed by the Israeli military along with three other captives in a raid that killed at least 274 Palestinians – told Netanyahu during a meeting on Monday that those remaining in Gaza “must be brought home as quickly as possible, before it is too late.”

She reportedly told the Israeli prime minister that “the hardest moment I had in captivity was when I listened to the radio and heard you say the war will be long.”

“I thought, ‘I won’t get out of here.’ It was a breaking point for me,” she said, according to Israeli media.

While Netanyahu is expected to meet US President Joe Biden this week, and a delegation from Tel Aviv is due to arrive in Cairo to resume talks on Wednesday evening, a senior Hamas official said that the Israeli prime minister “is still stalling and he is sending delegations only to calm the anger of Israeli captives’ families.”

• Article first published in the Electronic Intifada

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Maureen Clare Murphy.

In all this viciousness, the conventional armed forces have been held in check, the arsenals contained, the generals busied by plans of contingency rather than reality.  The rhetoric may be vengeful and spicily hysterical, but the states in the region keep their armies in reserve, and Armageddon at bay.  Till, naturally, they don’t.

To date, Israel is doing much to test the threshold of what might be called the rule of tolerable violence.  With Iran, for instance, it has adopted a “campaign between the wars”, primarily in Syria.  For over a decade, the Israeli strategy was to prevent the flow of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah, intercepting weapons shipments and targeting storage facilities.  “Importantly,” writes Haid Haid, a consulting fellow for Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, “Israel appeared to avoid, whenever feasible, killing Hezbollah or Iranian operatives during these operations.”

But the state of play has changed.  The Gaza War, which has become more the Gaza Massacre Project, has moved into its seventh month, packing morgues, destroying families and stimulating the terror of famine.  Despite calls from the Israeli military and various officials that Hamas’s capabilities have been irreparably weakened (this claim, like all those battling an idea rather than just a corporeal foe, remains refutable and redundant) the killings and policy of starvation continues against the general Palestinian populace.  The International Court of Justice interim orders continue to be ignored, even as the judges deliberate over the issue as to whether genocide is taking place in the Gaza Strip.  The restraints, in other words, have been taken off.

The signs are ominous.  Spilt blood is becoming hard currency.  Daily skirmishes between the IDF and Hezbollah are taking place on the Israeli-Lebanon border.  The Houthis are feverishly engaged with blocking and attacking international shipping in the Red Sea, hooting solidarity for the Palestinian cause.

On April 1, a blood crazed strike by Israel suggested that rules of tolerable violence had, if not been pushed, then altogether suspended.  The attack on Iran’s consular offices in Damascus by the Israeli Air Force was tantamount to striking Iranian soil.  In the process, it killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and other commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Zahedi’s deputy, General Haji Rahimi.  Retaliation was accordingly promised, with Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, vowing a response “at the same magnitude and harshness”.

It came on April 13, involving 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 36 cruise missiles, all directed at Israel proper.  Superficially, this looks anarchically quixotic, streakily disproportionate.  But Tehran went for a spectacular theatrical show to terrify and magnify rather than opt for any broader infliction of damage.  Israel’s Iron Dome system, along with allied powers, could be counted upon to aid the shooting down of almost all the offensive devices.  A statement had been made and the Iranians have so far drawn a line under any further military action.  What was deemed by certain pundits a tactical failure can just as easily be read as a strategic if provocative success.  The question then is: what follows?

The Israeli approach varies depending on who is being asked.  The IDF Chief of Staff, General Herzi Halevi, stated that “Israel is considering next steps” declaring that “the launch of so many missiles and drones to Israeli territory will be answered with retaliation.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was taloned in his hawkishness, demanding that Israel launch a “crushing” counterattack, “go crazy” and abandon “restraint and proportionality”, “concepts that passed away on October 7.”  The “response must not be a scarecrow, in the style of the dune bombings we saw in previous years in Gaza.”

Cabinet minister Benny Gantz, who is a voting member of the war cabinet alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, is tilting for a “regional coalition” to “exact the price from Iran, in the way and at the time that suits us.  And most importantly, in the face of the desire of our enemies to harm us, we will unite and become stronger.”  The immediate issues for resolution from Gantz’s perspective was the return of Israeli hostages “and the removal of the threat against the residents of the north and south.”

Such thinking will also be prompted by the response from the Biden administration that Netanyahu “think very carefully and strategically” about the next measures.  “You got a win,” President Joe Biden is reported to have told Netanyahu.  “Take the win.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also expressed the view that, “Strength and wisdom must be the two sides of the same coin.”

For decades, Israel has struck targets in sovereign countries with impunity, using expansive doctrines of pre-emption and self-defence. In doing so, the state always hoped that the understanding of tolerable violence would prevail.  Any retaliation, if any, would be modest, with “deterrence” assured. With the war in Gaza and the fanning out of conflict, the equation has changed.  To some degree, Ben Gvir is right that concepts of restraint and proportionality have been banished to the mortuary.  But such banishment, to a preponderant degree, was initiated by Israel.  The Israel-Gaza War is now, effectively, a global conflict, waged in regional miniature.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The U.S. continues to launch airstrikes on Yemen in response to the campaign of missile and drone attacks on commercial ships along key global trade routes through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden led by Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis. The Houthi strikes have expanded from targets connected to Israel, in protest of the siege and bombing of Gaza, to ships affiliated with the U.S. and U.K. in what the group calls acts of self-defense. “The Houthis have been extremely explicit and repeat on an almost daily basis that their attacks on ships in the Red Sea will stop as soon as the Gaza war ends,” says Helen Lackner, author of several books on Yemen, who describes the history of the Houthis, the political landscape in Yemen, and debunks the idea the group is controlled by Iran. “The Iranian involvement has become greater, but it’s very important to know that the Houthis are an independent movement. The Houthis are not Iranian proxies. … They make their own decisions.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

About 500 protesters marched through the heart of Auckland’s tourist suburb of Devonport today to the Royal New Zealand Navy base, accusing the government of backing genocide in the Middle East.

Demanding a “ceasefire now” in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza that has killed almost 27,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — so far, the protesters called on the New Zealand government to scrap its support for the US-led Red Sea maritime security operation against Yemen’s Houthis.

Speakers contrasted New Zealand’s “proud independent foreign policy” and nuclear-free years under former Labour prime ministers Norman Kirk and David Lange with the “gutless” approach of current Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

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Among many placards condemning the New Zealand government’s stance, one read: “We need a leader not a follower — grow some balls Luxon”. Others declared “It is shameful for NZ troops to aid genocide”, “Hands off Yemen” and “Blood on your hands”.

Led by the foreign affairs activist group Te Kūaka NZA and Palestinian Youth Aotearoa, the march was organised in reaction to Luxon’s announcement last week that New Zealand would deploy six NZ Defence Force officers to the Middle East in support of the US-led attacks on Yemen.

“We are appalled our government is dragging New Zealand into a new war in the Middle East instead of supporting diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza,” Te Kūaka spokesperson Dr Arama Rata said.

‘Unpopular, dangerous move’
“This is an unpopular, undemocratic, and dangerous move, taken without a parliamentary mandate, or authorisation from the United Nations Security Council, which could further inflame regional tensions.”

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott branded the New Zealand stance as preferring “trade over humanity!”

He said that in South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) the ruling indicated “plausible genocide” by Israel in its war on Gaza and that state was now on trial with an order to comply with six emergency measures and report back to The Hague within one month.

“This is something that has been obvious to all of us for months based on Israel’s actions on the ground in Gaza and Israeli politicians’ stated intent,” Scott said.

“Yet [our] government refuses to call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. It refuses to take any action to oppose that genocide.”

Referring to the Houthis (as Ansarallah are known in the West) and their blockade of the Red Sea, Scott said: “Ships and containers heading to Israel — no other ships to be impacted.

“They [Houthis] state that they are carrying out an obligation to oppose genocide under Article 1 of the Genocide Convention. They will end their blockade when Israel ends the genocide.

‘Oppose Israeli genocide’
“This is something every country in the world is meant to do. Oppose Israeli genocide — that includes Aotearoa.

“So what does Prime Minister Luxon, Minister of Foreign Affairs [Winston] Peters and Minister of Defence [Judith] Collins do? They decide to send our sailors to the Red Sea to defend ships — getting our Navy to be complicit in defending Israeli genocide.”

His comments were greeted with loud cries of “Shame”.

Scott declared that the protesters were calling on the government to “acknowledge New Zealand’s obligations” under Article 1 of the Genocide Convention; expel the Israeli ambassador until the genocide ends, and to “immediately rescind the order to send our sailors” to join the US forces “defending Israeli genocide”.

The protesters also called on New Zealand’s Defence Force chief Air Marshal Kevin Short and Navy chief Rear Admiral David Proctor to stand by the legal obligations of the Genocide Convention to oppose Israeli genocide.

Pointing to the HMNZS Philomel base as Navy officers and a police guard looked on, Green Party MP Steve Abel referenced New Zealand’s “proud episode 50 years ago” when the late Prime Minister Norman Kirk dispatched the frigate HMNZS Otago (and later the Canterbury) to Moruroa atoll in 1973 to protest against French nuclear tests.

He also highlighted Prime Minister David Lange’s championing of nuclear-free New Zealand and the nuclear-free Pacific Rarotonga Treaty “a decade later” in the 1980s.

Abel called for a return to the “courageous” independent foreign policies that New Zealanders had fought for in the past.

Today’s Devonport naval base protest followed a series of demonstrations and a social gathering in Cornwall Park over the holiday weekend in the wake of the “first step” success against impunity by South Africa’s legal team at The Hague last Friday. Other solidarity protests have taken place at some 17 locations across New Zealand.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The appeal came during two days of meetings in Bangkok between the pair, according to a senior Biden administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity according to rules set by the White House.

Over 12 hours, the pair also discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Myanmar’s civil war, North Korea, Israel’s war with Hamas, the South China Sea, fentanyl and artificial intelligence, the official said.

It was their first meeting since Oct. 26, when Wang visited Washington in the run-up to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to San Francisco in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, during which he also held direct talks with U.S. President Joe Biden.

The official said the meeting was meant to build on the commitments made during that summit, including to reinstate military-to-military talks and to stem illicit Chinese exports of precursors for fentanyl, which has been called a leading cause of death for American adults.

A working group on counternarcotics would be established on Tuesday and both Military-Maritime Consultative Agreement Meetings and talks about regulating artificial intelligence would be held in the Spring. 

“The two sides are committed to continuing these strategic channels of communication,” the official said, adding there would be “a telephone call between the two leaders at some point in the coming months.”

Diplomatic telephone

On the apparently widening conflict in the Middle East that began with the attack on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, the White House official said Sullivan had pressed Wang to use Beijing’s influence on Iran to push it to end attacks by Houthis on trade ships transiting the Red Sea.

The Houthis’ latest attack took place Friday and this time directly targeted a U.S. warship, the USS Carney, which was patrolling the area to try to prevent further attacks in the lucrative trade route.

Both Hamas and the Houthis have been labeled “proxies” of Iran by the United States, with Tehran not viewed as having direct control of either group but being accused of funding and training both. The Houthis, meanwhile, are accused of targeting trade ships off Yemen’s coast in response to Israel’s invasion of Hamas-controlled Gaza.

As a major trading nation, China had its own interests in stopping the attacks on the Red Sea route and had the ability to pressure Iran as one of the biggest buyers of its oil, the White House official said.

“We would characterize both the economic and trade relationship as giving Beijing leverage over Iran to some extent. How they choose to use that, of course, is China's choice,” the official said.

“Iran’s influence over the Houthis, and the Houthis’ destabilization of global shipping, raises serious concerns not just for the U.S. and China but for global trade,” they added. “There should be a clear interest in China in trying to quiet some of those attacks.”

The civil war in Myanmar was also discussed by Sullivan and Wang, building off talks between Sullivan and Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on Friday, during which the official said Sullivan “stressed the importance” of getting humanitarian aid into Myanmar.

However, the official said the United States was less hopeful about China’s assistance in pushing North Korea to end its growing nuclear weapons program or its recent provision of ballistic missiles to Russia.

“I'm not sure I would characterize anything recently as constructive,” the official said, adding the United States still hoped China would come round to helping “bring us back to the path of denuclearization.”

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.

Photograph Source: U.S. Navy Photo – Public Domain

On December 30, 2023, the Singapore-flagged Maersk Hangzhou, owned by Danish company Maersk Line, came under missile and subsequent boat attacks by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. The U.S. Navy responded by using helicopters to destroy three of the four ships used in the assault. Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, immediately announced it was suspending operations in the sea indefinitely, rejoining major Western shipping firms and energy companies in redirecting shipping away from the region.

Houthi attacks have occurred regularly since October 2023 after the group declared it would target ships associated with Israel. In response, Washington announced a task force on December 18—Operation Prosperity Guardian—to combat the attacks, and imposed sanctions on Houthi funding networks, mainly linked to Iran. But the difficulty in securing the Red Sea’s narrow waters and the bottleneck at the Suez Canal have laid bare the fragility of global shipping, with an estimated 20 percent decline in ship traffic through the Red Sea in December 2023. Daily container vessel traffic through the Suez Canal had meanwhile halved by early January 2024, compared to a year before.

The repercussions of redirecting shipping are being felt globally, with ocean cargo rates skyrocketingsince the attacks began. By early January, the logistics company Freightos reported that rates for Asia-to-North Europe shipping had more than doubled to above $4,000 per 40-foot container. By mid-January, the cost of sending a 24-foot shipping container from India to Europe and the U.S. East Coast had risen from $600 to $1,500. Adding to the financial burden, surcharges ranging from $500 to $2,700 per container are anticipated, and rates for shipments from Asia to North America have also experienced significant hikes.

For those daring to navigate the Red Sea, insurance premiums have more than tripled from 0.2 percent to 0.7 percent of a vessel’s value per journey. Though consumers haven’t yet felt the brunt of rising prices, the specter of inflation looms in the coming weeks. The anticipated domino effects recall the aftermath of the 2021 Ever Given disaster, when a ship ran aground in the Suez Canal for six days, leaving a lasting impact that reverberated for months.

The imperative for the U.S. in controlling and stabilizing threats to shipping is underscored by its commitment to global economic stability, dollar-dominated international trade, and the leverage it gains over allies and adversaries. Being able to ensure or compromise the safe movement of other countries’ goods and military vessels complements Washington’s ability to enforce blockades and economic sanctions, as well as to respond quickly to global crises and combat terrorism and organized crime.

Despite the challenges in maintaining its influence, the U.S. has successfully dealt with threats to global shipping before. Multilateral safeguards like the Combined Maritime Forces, consisting of dozens of countries under U.S. command, monitor the Middle East, and task forces such as the Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151), created in 2009, have successfully tackled specific threats such as Somali piracy.

Since 2015, the Houthis have intermittently targeted ships in the Red Sea, but their sustained campaign since October 2023 has raised significant doubts about the U.S. military’s capacity to safeguard shipping. Operating out of Yemen, the Houthis employ a mix of missiles, radars, helicopters, small boats, and inexpensive drones, presenting a challenge as they lack substantial infrastructure susceptible to targeting. The use by the U.S. Navy of $2 million missiles to intercept $2,000 drones adds to concerns about the cost-effectiveness of its response.

Benefitting from Iranian logistical aid and driven by their steadfast commitment to the Palestinian cause, the Houthis have encountered minimal resistance from regional countries hesitant to escalate tensions. Following its eight-year campaign in Yemen, neighboring Saudi Arabia withdrew from the country and entered peace talks with the Houthis in 2022. Apart from tiny Bahrain, local partners of the U.S. have refrained from joining Operation Prosperity Guardian out of fear of being accused of supporting Israel. Even Egypt, which is witnessing substantial losses in transit revenue through the Suez Canal, has opted to stay on the sidelines.

The inability of the Saudi military, bolstered by modern Western weapons, to overcome Houthi forces over the last decade by relying on air raids and drone strikes implies that a ground intervention may be necessary to effectively defeat the Houthis. Yet Washington lacks the resolve and influence to undertake such an effort. Notably, NATO allies, including France, Italy, and Spain, withdrew from Operation Prosperity Guardian to avoid being under U.S. command, leaving only a few core allies like the UK and Australia—the latter of which has sent 11 military personnel to the region but no ships.

Meanwhile, other major powers have sought to conduct their own independent operations in the region. After declining Washington’s invitation to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, the Indian Navy began its own operations in the region. China also declined the opportunity to join the multilateral coalition, and has also distanced itself from U.S. messaging on the crisis as it deploys its own military vessels to the region.

Failing to deter the Houthis will inspire others to test Washington’s willingness to defend open shipping lanes. After declining significantly in recent years, Somali piracy since increased in 2023. Southeast Asia has also seen a steady rise in piracy over the last few years, and there are fears incidents could continue to rise with the U.S. distracted in the Middle East. Additionally, Iran has seized Western ships sailing through the region before and was accused by the Pentagon in December 2023 of using a drone to attack a chemical tanker in the Indian Ocean.

The attacks and blowback from the conflict have reverberations beyond regional trade. In December 2023, Malaysia closed its ports to Israeli ships, while Russian actions in the Black Sea have further disrupted international shipping. Moreover, the situation could impact freedom of navigation exercises globally. Heightening tensions and China’s escalatory movements in the South China Sea and Taiwan have stirred unease in the U.S., prompting two-day talks between defense officials from Washington and Beijing in early January ahead of Taiwan’s recent election.

Russia, China, and Iran welcome the U.S.’s struggle to maintain control over sea lanes due to the Houthi threat, seeing it as an opportunity to exploit Washington’s global standing. However, particularly in the case of China, they have also benefited from the stability that this system has provided to global trade, and viable alternative routes for overseas trade remain undeveloped and untested.

Amid the chaos, the Panama Canal, another crucial juncture for international shipping, faces disruptions from severe drought lowering water levels. As only a limited number of ships can navigate through, Washington’s oversight in ensuring the uninterrupted flow of global sea lanes appears more precarious than it has been in decades. While options like continued military convoys and the rise of private maritime security companies are on the table, the Suez Canal’s eight-year closure after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War remains an ominous reminder of what is at stake.

As Washington attempts to balance control with the risk of escalation, the Houthis have underscored the resilient influence of non-state actors in 21st-century geopolitics amid the resurgence of great power competition. The situation has become the latest litmus test for Washington’s commitment to preserving access to global sea lanes, even as it pivots toward friendshoring and reshoring economic policies encouraging overland trade and manufacturing in North America.

As the 2024 election season unfolds and the enduring impact of Trump’s “America First” policies persists, safeguarding global sea lanes may emerge as a pivotal topic in the upcoming election. Coupled with the unique challenges posed by the Houthis, mounting an effective and decisive response against the maritime threat has so far proven elusive for the Biden Administration. Ongoing U.S. and UK airstrikes against the Houthis have not prevented further attacks on shipping. The longer it takes to respond effectively, the greater the threat to the future of the current state of global supply chains and U.S. dominance of the world’s waterways.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

The post Houthis Emerge as Latest Threat to U.S. Control Over Global Shipping appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John P. Ruehl.

Houthi-affiliated Yemeni coastguard patrols the Red Sea, flying Palestinian and Yemeni flags. [Credit: AFP]

In the topsy-turvy world of corporate media reporting on U.S. foreign policy, we have been led to believe that U.S. air strikes on Yemen, Iraq and Syria are legitimate and responsible efforts to contain the expanding war over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while the actions of the Houthi government in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran and its allies in Iraq and Syria are all dangerous escalations.

In fact, it is U.S. and Israeli actions that are driving the expansion of the war, while Iran and others are genuinely trying to find effective ways to counter and end Israel’s genocide in Gaza while avoiding a full-scale regional war.

We are encouraged by Egypt and Qatar’s efforts to mediate a ceasefire and the release of hostages and prisoners-of-war by both sides. But it is important to recognize who are the aggressors, who are the victims, and how regional actors are taking incremental but increasingly forceful action to respond to genocide.

A near-total Israeli communications blackout in Gaza has reduced the flow of images of the ongoing massacre on our TVs and computer screens, but the slaughter has not abated. Israel is bombing and attacking Khan Younis, the largest city in the southern Gaza Strip, as ruthlessly as it did Gaza City in the north. Israeli forces and U.S. weapons have killed an average of 240 Gazans per day for more than three months, and 70% of the dead are still women and children.

Israel has repeatedly claimed it is taking new steps to protect civilians, but that is only a public relations exercise. The Israeli government is still using 2,000 pound and even 5,000 pound “bunker-buster” bombs to dehouse the people of Gaza and herd them toward the Egyptian border, while it debates how to push the survivors over the border into exile, which it euphemistically refers to as “voluntary emigration.”

People throughout the Middle East are horrified by Israel’s slaughter and plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but most of their governments will only condemn Israel verbally. The Houthi government in Yemen is different. Unable to directly send forces to fight for Gaza, they began enforcing a blockade of the Red Sea against Israeli-owned ships and other ships carrying goods to or from Israel. Since mid-November 2023, the Houthis have conducted about 30 attacks on international vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden but none of the attacks have caused casualties or sunk any ships.

In response,  the Biden administration, without Congressional approval, has launched at least six rounds of bombing, including airstrikes on Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. The United Kingdom has contributed a few warplanes, while Australia, Canada, Holland and Bahrain also act as cheerleaders to provide the U.S. with the cover of leading an “international coalition.”

President Biden has admitted that U.S. bombing will not force Yemen to lift its blockade, but he insists that the U.S. will keep attacking it anyway. Saudi Arabia dropped 70,000 mostly American (and some British) bombs on Yemen in a 7-year war, but utterly failed to defeat the Houthi government and armed forces.

Yemenis naturally identify with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, and a million Yemenis took to the street to support their country’s position challenging Israel and the United States. Yemen is no Iranian puppet, but as with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Iraqi and Syrian allies, Iran has trained the Yemenis to build and deploy increasingly powerful anti-ship, cruise and ballistic missiles.

The Houthis have made it clear that they will stop the attacks once Israel stops its slaughter in Gaza. It beggars belief that instead of pressing for a ceasefire in Gaza, Biden and his clueless advisers are instead choosing to deepen U.S. military involvement in a regional Middle East conflict.

The United States and Israel have now conducted airstrikes on the capitals of four neighboring countries: Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran also suspects U.S. and Israeli spy agencies of a role in two bomb explosions in Kerman in Iran, which killed about 90 people and wounded hundreds more at a commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.

On January 20, an Israeli bombing killed 10 people in Damascus, including 5 Iranian officials. After repeated Israeli airstrikes on Syria, Russia has now deployed warplanes to patrol the border to deter Israeli attacks, and has reoccupied two previously vacated outposts built to monitor violations of the demilitarized zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Iran has responded to the terrorist bombings in Kerman and Israeli assassinations of Iranian officials with missile strikes on targets in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan. Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdohallian has strongly defended Iran’s claim that the strikes on Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan targeted agents of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

Eleven Iranian ballistic missiles destroyed an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence facility and the home of a senior intelligence officer, and also killed a wealthy real estate developer and businessman, Peshraw Dizayee, who had been accused of working for the Mossad, as well as of smuggling Iraqi oil from Kurdistan to Israel via Turkey.

The targets of Iran’s missile strikes in northwest Syria were the headquarters of two separate ISIS-linked groups in Idlib province. The strikes precisely hit both buildings and demolished them, at a range of 800 miles, using Iran’s newest ballistic missiles called Kheybar Shakan or Castle Blasters, a name that equates today’s U.S. bases in the Middle East with the 12th and 13th century European crusader castles whose ruins still dot the landscape.

Iran launched its missiles, not from north-west Iran, which would have been closer to Idlib, but from Khuzestan province in south-west Iran, which is closer to Tel Aviv than to Idlib. So these missile strikes were clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States that Iran can conduct precise attacks on Israel and U.S. “crusader castles” in the Middle East if they continue their aggression against Palestine, Iran and their allies.

At the same time, the U.S. has escalated its tit-for-tat airstrikes against Iranian-backed Iraqi militias. The Iraqi government has consistently protested U.S. airstrikes against the militias as violations of Iraqi sovereignty. Prime Minister Sudani’s military spokesman called the latest U.S. airstrikes “acts of aggression,” and said, “This unacceptable act undermines years of cooperation… at a time when the region is already grappling with the danger of expanding conflict, the repercussions of the aggression on Gaza.”

After its fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq killed thousands of U.S. troops, the United States has avoided large numbers of U.S. military casualties for ten years. The last time the U.S. lost more than a hundred troops killed in action in a year was in 2013, when 128 Americans were killed in Afghanistan.

Since then, the United States has relied on bombing and proxy forces to fight its wars. The only lesson U.S. leaders seem to have learned from their lost wars is to avoid putting U.S. “boots on the ground.” The U.S. dropped over 120,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq and Syria in its war on ISIS, while Iraqis, Syrians and Kurds did all the hard fighting on the ground.

In Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies found a willing proxy to fight Russia. But after two years of war, Ukrainian casualties have become unsustainable and new recruits are hard to find. The Ukrainian parliament has rejected a bill to authorize forced conscription, and no amount of U.S. weapons can persuade more Ukrainians to sacrifice their lives for a Ukrainian nationalism that treats large numbers of them, especially Russian speakers, as second class citizens.

 Now, in Gaza, Yemen and Iraq, the United States has waded into what it hoped would be another “US-casualty-free” war. Instead, the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza is unleashing a crisis that is spinning out of control across the region and may soon directly involve U.S. troops in combat. This will shatter the illusion of peace Americans have lived in for the last ten years of U.S. bombing and proxy wars, and bring the reality of U.S. militarism and warmaking home with a vengeance.

Biden can continue to give Israel carte-blanche to wipe out the people of Gaza, and watch as the region becomes further engulfed in flames, or he can listen to his own campaign staff, who warn that it’s a “moral and electoral imperative” to insist on a ceasefire. The choice could not be more stark.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

RNZ News

New Zealand’s defence minister has defended a decision to send six NZ Defence Force staff to the Middle East to help “take out” Houthis fighters as they are “essentially holding the world to ransom”.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins confirmed the plan at the first Cabinet meeting for the year.

The deployment, which could run until the end of July, will support the military efforts led by the United States to protect commercial and merchant vessels.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘They are essentially holding the world to ransom’ – Defence Minister Judith Collins
• NZDF mission in Red Sea has ‘shades of Iraq’ – Labour
• ‘Abhorrent’ attacks must stop after 12 killed killed at Gaza civilian shelter – UN

No NZ military staff would be entering Yemen.

The Houthis attacks are disrupting supply lines, and forcing ships to voyage thousands of kilometres further around Africa in protest against the Israeli war on Gaza.

But opposition parties have condemned the government’s plan, saying it had “shades of Iraq”.

‘Firmly on side of Western backers of Israel’
A security analyst also said the US-requested deployment could be interpreted as New Zealand “planting its flag firmly on the side of the Western backers of Israel”.

Speaking to RNZ Morning Report, Defence Minister Judith Collins denied it showed New Zealand being in support of Israel over the war on Gaza.

She said it was a “very difficult situation”, but not what the deployment was about.

“It’s about the ability to get our goods to market . . .  we’re talking about unarmed merchant vessels moving through the Red Sea no longer able to do so without being attacked.”

Collins said New Zealand had been involved in the Middle East for a “very long time” and it needed to assist where possible to remain a good international partner and to make sure military targets were “taken out”.

Houthis had been given a number of serious warnings, Collins said, and its actions were “outrageous”.

“They are essentially holding the world to ransom.”

NZ would not allow ‘pirates’
New Zealand was part of the world community and would not stand by and allow “pirates to take over our ships or anyone’s ships”.

Collins said she was not expecting there to be any extension or expansion of the deployment which would end on July 31.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been attacking ships in the Red Sea, which they say are linked to Israel, since the start of the Israel-Gaza conflict. In response, US and British forces have been carrying out strikes at different locations in Yemen, with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, according to a joint statement signed by the six countries.

The opposition Labour Party is condemning the coalition government’s deployment of Defence Force troops to the Middle East, saying it has “shades of Iraq”.

Labour foreign affairs spokesperson David Parker made clear his party’s opposition to the deployment.

“We don’t think we should become embroiled in that conflict . . .  which is part of a longer term civil war in Yemen and we think that New Zealand should stay out of this, there’s no UN resolution in favour of it . . . we don’t think we should get involved in a conflict in the Middle East.”

‘Deeply disturbing’, say Greens
The Green Party’s co-leaders have also expressed their unhappiness with the deployment, describing it as “deeply disturbing”.

In a statement, Marama Davidson and James Shaw said they were “horrified at this government’s decision to further inflame tensions in the Middle East”.

“The international community has an obligation to protect peace and human rights. Right now, what we are witnessing in the Middle East is a regional power play between different state and non-state groups. This decision is only likely to inflame tensions.”

Davidson and Shaw indicated they would call for an urgent debate on the deployment when Parliament resumes next week.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

“How dare we have a conversation about trade when there are children right now being treated without anaesthetic?”

British journalist Myriam Francois on the Houthis blockade of shipments in the Red sea amid Israel’s war on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/Yg9RV2ek4p

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 24, 2024

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A group of foreign policy critics alarmed at the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s “undemocratic decision” to step up support for US-led strikes against Yemen have warned against “inflaming” the Red Sea maritime crisis.

They have urgently called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza as they say the Israeli war that has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians is the root cause of the crisis.

The foreign policy group, Te Kuaka, said in a statement that the government’s decision to deploy a six-member NZ Defence Force team to the Middle East was “deeply alarming”.

• READ MORE: New Zealand to deploy Defence Force to Red Sea
• Back SA over genocide case, ‘don’t yield to pressure’, Hania tells NZ
• ABC staff ‘have lost confidence’ in boss in defending public trust in Israel row

The government announcement came this afternoon at a post-Cabinet media conference.

Group co-director Dr Arama Rata said: “New Zealand’s involvement in the Red Sea will just inflame regional instability and cause more civilian deaths without addressing the root cause of the Houthi actions, which is ending the genocide in Gaza.”

Dr Rata said it was deeply alarming that this decision was made without a Parliamentary mandate, particularly given the incredibly high stakes of the crisis.

“There has been no explicit authorisation of military action in self defence against Yemen by the UN Security Council either,” she said.

‘Frightening precedent’
“This sets a frightening precedent for how foreign policy decisions are made.

“There are huge risks to not just the Middle East, but New Zealand directly, when we take the side of the US and the UK, nations that have a long history of oppressive intervention in the Global South.”

Co-director Dr Marco de Jong said: “We know that public opinion and a Parliamentary mandate would have swayed any foreign policy decisions in the direction of calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

“Public polls and weekly protests for Palestine, since October 7, have shown this to be the case.”

Thousands took to Queen Street in the heart of Auckland for the 15th consecutive week to protest over the war and to call for a ceasefire and an end to genocide. One of the Palestinian speakers addressing the crowd reminded them millions of citizen protesters were demonstrating all over the world.

The protesters condemned Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for failing to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

At today’s, post-cabinet media conference Luxon claimed the Houthi attacks were hurting New Zealand exporters.

Global trade
“Nearly 15 percent of global trade goes through the Red Sea, and the Houthi attacks are driving costs higher for New Zealanders and causing delays to shipments,” Luxon said.

However, Dr de Jong said: “By pre-empting these criticisms [such as by critics and protesters] in its own announcement, the government is wrongly suggesting that our intervention in the Middle East will not be viewed in the context of genocide in Gaza and highlighting NZ’s previous involvement in US-led misadventures — which have been similarly deadly and destructive.”

Dr Rata added: “We need to have an honest reflection about our positioning alongside the US and the UK.

“Instead of colluding with these colonial powers, we should be standing with countries like Brazil and South Africa, which are challenging old colonial regimes, and represent the majority of the international community.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A group of foreign policy critics alarmed at the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s “undemocratic decision” to step up support for US-led strikes against Yemen have warned against “inflaming” the Red Sea maritime crisis.

They have urgently called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza as they say the Israeli war that has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians is the root cause of the crisis.

The foreign policy group, Te Kuaka, said in a statement that the government’s decision to deploy a six-member NZ Defence Force team to the Middle East was “deeply alarming”.

• READ MORE: New Zealand to deploy Defence Force to Red Sea
• Back SA over genocide case, ‘don’t yield to pressure’, Hania tells NZ
• ABC staff ‘have lost confidence’ in boss in defending public trust in Israel row

The government announcement came this afternoon at a post-Cabinet media conference.

Group co-director Dr Arama Rata said: “New Zealand’s involvement in the Red Sea will just inflame regional instability and cause more civilian deaths without addressing the root cause of the Houthi actions, which is ending the genocide in Gaza.”

Dr Rata said it was deeply alarming that this decision was made without a Parliamentary mandate, particularly given the incredibly high stakes of the crisis.

“There has been no explicit authorisation of military action in self defence against Yemen by the UN Security Council either,” she said.

‘Frightening precedent’
“This sets a frightening precedent for how foreign policy decisions are made.

“There are huge risks to not just the Middle East, but New Zealand directly, when we take the side of the US and the UK, nations that have a long history of oppressive intervention in the Global South.”

Co-director Dr Marco de Jong said: “We know that public opinion and a Parliamentary mandate would have swayed any foreign policy decisions in the direction of calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

“Public polls and weekly protests for Palestine, since October 7, have shown this to be the case.”

Thousands took to Queen Street in the heart of Auckland for the 15th consecutive week to protest over the war and to call for a ceasefire and an end to genocide. One of the Palestinian speakers addressing the crowd reminded them millions of citizen protesters were demonstrating all over the world.

The protesters condemned Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for failing to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

At today’s, post-cabinet media conference Luxon claimed the Houthi attacks were hurting New Zealand exporters.

Global trade
“Nearly 15 percent of global trade goes through the Red Sea, and the Houthi attacks are driving costs higher for New Zealanders and causing delays to shipments,” Luxon said.

However, Dr de Jong said: “By pre-empting these criticisms [such as by critics and protesters] in its own announcement, the government is wrongly suggesting that our intervention in the Middle East will not be viewed in the context of genocide in Gaza and highlighting NZ’s previous involvement in US-led misadventures — which have been similarly deadly and destructive.”

Dr Rata added: “We need to have an honest reflection about our positioning alongside the US and the UK.

“Instead of colluding with these colonial powers, we should be standing with countries like Brazil and South Africa, which are challenging old colonial regimes, and represent the majority of the international community.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Israel’s unrelenting assault on the Gaza Strip is beginning to tip the Middle East into a wider regional conflict. In the past week, the Houthis in Yemen emerged as an unlikely power player, successfully disrupting global shipping in the name of Palestinians in Gaza and goading the U.S. into launching a series of airstrikes in a failed bid at deterrence.

Over the past three months, the Houthis have attacked merchant ships passing through the Red Sea, an unexpected military intervention aimed at forcing Israel to end its U.S.-backed offensive in Gaza and allow aid into the besieged territory.

The Houthis’ squeeze on the critical trade route is already impacting the global economy: Spooked shipping companies have diverted vessels toward more costly routes, with risk insurance premiums and global shipping prices rising. The effects of the attempted blockade could soon be seen in the costs of oil and consumer goods worldwide.

The U.S. Navy, considered the security guarantor of maritime shipping routes across much of the world, was eventually pressured into action. Since last week, the U.S. launched five airstrikes on Houthi positions. The Houthis doubled down. They fired at passing ships with several more rounds of missiles and drones. The targets included U.S. commercial vessels and a U.S. Navy warship — signs that the rebels were only emboldened by the U.S. volley.

During a White House press briefing on Thursday, President Joe Biden acknowledged that the airstrikes were not stopping the Houthis but said the U.S. would keep targeting the group anyway.

With its decision to attack, the Biden administration appears to have opened itself up to a geopolitical checkmate by the Houthis. Escalating the strikes against the rebels will likely bring more shipping disruptions — potentially counterproductive to mitigating economic consequences — and risk a full-blown regional war. Negotiating or submitting to the demands of a nonstate militia group from one of the poorest countries in the world would be seen by many as a U.S. surrender and would boost the Houthis’ newfound popularity.

Battle-hardened in a brutal civil war with a Saudi-backed Yemeni government-in-exile, the Houthis look unready to back down, even inviting the wider conflict.

“The Houthis absolutely want this conflict,” said Iona Craig, a journalist and political specialist focused on Yemen. “It is part of their ideology, whose anti-American element was formed during the period of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They now very much see themselves as the defenders of Palestinians and the people of Gaza.”

“The Houthis absolutely want this conflict. … They now very much see themselves as the defenders of Palestinians and the people of Gaza.”

With the Houthis undeterred, the U.S. State Department took a different approach on Wednesday, designating the militia as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group, a partial reversal of its decision in 2021 to remove the Houthis from the more stringent Foreign Terrorist Organization list. The new designation makes the Houthis subject to economic and political sanctions but avoids the stricter rules of the FTO list. Humanitarian groups said harsher measures would impede aid to areas of Yemen that Houthis came to control during the civil war.

Two hours after being redesignated as a terror group in the U.S., the Houthis targeted a U.S. carrier ship, and the U.S. responded with another round of strikes.

“The Biden administration seems to be hoping that degrading Houthi capabilities will coerce them to stop, but that doesn’t appear to be working,” Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank based in Washington, told The Intercept. “Everyone is deterrable, and the Houthis are not lunatics. But the problem when dealing with nonstate actors is that it requires more force to get them to change their strategic calculus.”

He added, “The Saudis also thought that they could beat the Houthis militarily without having to address any of the political demands that they were making.”

Ragtag Rebels to Regional Aspirations

Once a small, ragtag army, the Houthis learned to hit back against much more powerful militaries over years of civil war and foreign intervention — acquiring knowledge they appear to be putting into practice against the U.S.

The Houthis, officially known as Ansarallah, emerged decades ago as a movement opposed to the perceived corruption of the Yemeni government. For the past several years, the group has been at war with the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and are currently in peace negotiations to end the conflict. The U.S. played a key role in the civil war, heavily arming — and for a time giving direct assistance to — an air campaign by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that inflicted huge civilian casualties. The onslaught failed to defeat the Houthis.

The civil war became a training ground where the Houthis learned to outmaneuver vastly superior U.S.-made weapons — especially air power — in its current operation in the Red Sea. The rebels use inexpensive anti-ship missiles and small boats to attack the shipping vessels, utilizing the advantage of light and mobile forces that drive up costs and weaken the effectiveness of enemies’ attacks from the air.

“The Houthis have a big force, but they rely on distributing their power broadly across the territory that they control. They rely more on being mobile than on heavy infrastructure,” said Baraa Shiban, a political analyst on Yemen and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “They have survived a long air campaign by two of the stronger militaries in the region, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and have adapted how to move and operate their forces accordingly.”

The Houthis are often dismissed as mere proxies of Iran, part of a nexus of groups referred to as the “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian militants of Hamas. Analysts, however, say that while Iran does provide the Houthis with money, weapons, and military training, the Houthis operate with relative political independence.

“It is robbing them of their agency when we say that the Houthis are merely stooges of Iran,” Hisham Al-Omeisy, senior adviser on Yemen with the European Institute of Peace, told The Intercept. “They have their own mindset, agenda, and ideology.”

The civil war became a training ground where the Houthis learned to outmaneuver vastly superior U.S.-made weapons.

In its most dramatic display of independence, the Houthis reportedly rebuffed Iranian efforts to stop them from taking the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in 2015, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

The Houthis have long made confrontation with the U.S. and Israel a major plank of their ideology, expressed as a blend of Islamism, anti-imperialism, and overt antisemitism. Along with other Iran-backed groups, the Houthis reject most aspects of the U.S.-backed political order in the region and have made serious threats to the stability of U.S.-allied regimes like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

“One of the main things people miss about the Houthis is that their end goal is not just Yemen. This is an expansionist group with regional ambitions,” said Al-Omeisy. “This conflict is a perfect opportunity for them to say that they are the real vanguard of the Arab nation, while other leaders are complicit in the suffering of the Palestinians.”

Winning Hearts and Minds

At the center of the unrest in the Red Sea is the crisis in Gaza, which has been devastated by Israeli attacks since the October 7 offensive by Hamas. Though Israeli troops are carrying out the war that has killed more than 24,000 Palestinians, the U.S. is the patron and enabler. The Biden administration continues to offer unblinking financial and diplomatic support to Israel, despite mounting accusations against the U.S. of complicity in genocide.

The Houthis entered the fray almost immediately. In the days after Israel launched its retaliatory assault, the Houthis sent ballistic missiles toward Israel and began its attacks on the Red Sea shipping lanes.

The Houthis have long been a polarizing force in Yemeni politics, but they have seized on anti-American sentiment in the Arab world and the seeming indifference of pro-U.S. regimes to the suffering in Gaza to elevate their geopolitical status. Not only are the Houthis distinguishing themselves as champions of the Palestinian cause, but they are also rehabilitating their reputation at home, where they have struggled to set up a functional government amid civil war. Houthi spokespeople have become fixtures on Arabic-language television stations, where they relish their role challenging the West over the plight of the Palestinians.

Not only are the Houthis distinguishing themselves as champions of the Palestinian cause, but they are also rehabilitating their reputation at home.

Anger toward the U.S. seems likely to grow in the region, as the Biden administration appears to be putting the global economy over Palestinian lives in its strikes on the Houthis.

“The U.S. should consider that these actions in Gaza are enraging people throughout the region,” said Al-Omeisy. “The local perception is that when Palestinian blood was being shed the last three months, no one was bothered, but when the economic interests of the West were threatened, they immediately acted. This message fits right into Houthi rhetoric and is resonating very strongly in the region.”

Their bid is working. Rather than weakening the Houthis, the U.S. airstrikes seem to be boosting the Houthis’ political standing throughout the Middle East, where analysts say public opinion of the U.S. has reached lows not seen since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Polls taken among Arabs in the region show widespread anger and disillusionment toward the U.S. since the start of the Gaza war, with far more favorable views of rival countries like China and Russia.

“The Biden administration and U.S. policymakers have not yet grasped how high anti-Americanism is in the region, where it is at a level that we have not seen since the war in Iraq,” Shiban, of Royal United Services Institute, said. “Even if they claim that this is an Israeli operation and we have nothing to do with it, the Arab public does not buy it.”

With the U.S. military now stuck in an exchange of attacks with the Houthis, experts say the Biden administration has no good options.

“I don’t think that the U.S. is trying to engage in regime change in Yemen,” said DePetris, the Defense Priorities fellow, “but if this continues to snowball, that may end up being something that the administration may try to consider.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

You have to hand it to the U.S. and its henchmen for brazenness.  In order to protect their client state Israel and its genocide in Gaza, the U.S., together with the UK, have in one week launched air and sea attacks on the Houthis in Yemen five times, referring to it as “self-defense” in their Orwellian lingo.  The ostensible reason being Yemen’s refusal to allow ships bound for Israel, which is committing genocide in Gaza, to enter the Red Sea, while permitting other ships to pass freely.

To any impartial observer, the Houthis should be lauded.  Yet, while the International Court of Justice considers the South African charge of genocide against Israel that is supported by overwhelming evidence, the U.S. and its allies have instigated a wider war throughout the Middle East while claiming they do not want such a war.  These settler colonial states want genocide and a much wider war because they have been set back on their heels by those they have mocked, provoked, and attacked – notably the Palestinians, Syrians, and Russians, among others.

While the criminalization of international law does not bode well for the ICJ’s upcoming ruling or its ability to stop Israeli’s genocide in Gaza, Michel Chossudovsky, of Global Research, as is his wont, has offered a superb analysis and suggestion for those who oppose such crimes: that Principle IV of the Nuremberg Charter – “The fact that a person [e.g. Israeli, U.S. soldiers, pilots] acted pursuant to order of his [her] Government or of a superior does not relieve him [her] from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” – should be used to supplement the South African charges and appeal directly to the moral consciences of those asked to carry out acts of genocide. He writes:

Let us call upon Israeli and American soldiers and pilots “to abandon the battlefield”, as an act of refusal to participate in a criminal undertaking against the People of Gaza.  

South Africa’s legal procedure at the ICJ should be endorsed Worldwide. While it cannot be relied upon to put a rapid end to the genocide, it provides support and legitimacy to the “Disobey Unlawful Orders, Abandon the Battlefield”  campaign under Nuremberg Charter Principle IV.

While such an approach will not stop the continuing slaughter, it would remind the world that each person who participates in and supports it bears a heavy burden of guilt for their actions; that they are morally and legally culpable.  This appeal to the human heart and conscience, no matter what its practical effect, will at least add to the condemnation of a genocide happening in real time and full view of the world, even though no one will ever be prosecuted for such crimes since any real just use of international law has long disappeared.  Yet there is a edifying history of such conscientious objection to immoral war making, and though each person makes the decision in solitary witness, individual choices can inspire others and the solitary become solidary, as Albert Camus reminded us at the end of his short story, “The Artist at Work.”

With each passing day, it becomes more and more evident that Israel/U.S.A. and their allies do want a wider war.  Iran is their special focus, with Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen targets on the way.  Anyone who supports the genocide in Gaza, explicitly or through silence, bears responsibility for the conflagration to come.  There are no excuses.

And the facts show that it is axiomatic that waging war has been the modus operandi of the U.S./Israeli alliance for a long time.  Just as in early 2003 when the Bush administration said they were looking for a peaceful solution to their fake charges against Sadam Hussein with his alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” the Biden administration is lying, as the Bush administration lied about September 11, 2001 to launch its ongoing war on terror, starting in Afghanistan.  Without an expanded war, President Biden – aka the Democrats, since he will most probably not be the candidate – and his psychopathic partner Benjamin Netanyahu, will not survive.  It is bi-partisan war-mongering, of course, internationally and intramurally, since both U.S. political parties are controlled by the Israel Lobby and billionaire class that owns Congress and the “defense” industry that thrives on never-ending war to such an extent that even the notable independent candidate for the presidency, Robert Kennedy, Jr., who is running as an anti-war candidate, fully supports Israel which is tantamount to supporting Biden’s expanding war policy.

Biden and Netanyahu, who are always claiming after the fact that they were surprised by events or were fed bad advice by their underlings, are dumb scorpions. They are stupid but deadly.  And many people in the West, while perhaps decent people in their personal lives, are living in a fantasy world of “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity,” in MLK, Jr.’s words, as the growing threat of a world war increases and insouciance reigns.

Neither the Israeli nor American government can allow themselves to be humiliated, U.S./NATO by the Russians in Ukraine and the Israelis by the Palestinians.  Like cornered criminals with lethal weapons, they will kill as many as they can on their way down, taking their revenge on the weakest first.

Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned.  They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence.  They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. They miscalculate the perfidy of the moneyed elites whom allegedly they oppose while pocketing their cash and ushering them into the national coffers out of necessity since they are too big to fail.  They never see the storm coming, even as they create it.  Their incompetence or the perfidy of their enemies is the retort to all those “nut cases” who conjure up conspiracy theories or plain facts to explain their actions or lack thereof.  They are innocent.  Always innocent.  And they can’t understand why those they have long abused reach a point when they will no longer impetrate for mercy but will fight fiercely for their freedom.

All signs point to a major war on the horizon.  Both the U.S.A. and Israel have been shown to be rogue states with no desire to negotiate a peaceful world.  Believing in high-tech weapons and massive firepower, neither has learned the hard lesson that anti-colonial wars have historically been won by those with far less weapons but with a passionate desire to throw off the chains of their oppressors.  Vietnam is the text-book case, and there are many others.  Failure to learn is the name of their game.

The Zionist project for a Greater Israel is doomed to fail, but as it does, desperate men like Biden and Netanyahu are intent on launching desperate acts of war.  Exactly when and how this expanded war will blaze across the headlines is the question.  It has started, but I think it prudent to expect a black swan event sometime this year when all hell will break loose.  The genocide in Gaza is the first step, and the U.S./Israel, “not wanting” a wider war, have already started one.

(For an excellent history lesson on the Zionist oppression of Palestinians and the current genocide, listen to Max Blumenthal’s and Miko Peled’s impassioned talk – “Where is the War in Gaza Going? – delivered from the heart of darkness, Washington D.C.  Two Jewish men who know the difference between Zionism and Judaism and whose consciences are aflame with justice for the oppressed Palestinians.)

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

On 11 January, Adila Hassim, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, stood before the judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and said: “Genocides are never declared in advance. But this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts”. This statement anchored Hassim’s presentation of South Africa’s 84-page complaint against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and South Africa are parties to the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The filing by the South African government documents many of the atrocities perpetrated by Israel as well as, crucially, the declarations of intent to conduct genocide made by senior Israeli officials. Nine pages of this text (pp. 59 to 67) list ‘expressions of genocidal intent’ made primarily by Israeli state officials, such as calls for a ‘Second Nakba’ and a ‘Gaza Nakba’ (Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, refers to the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homes that led to the creation of the state of Israel). These chilling declarations of intent have appeared repeatedly in the Israeli government’s speeches and statements since 7 October alongside racist language about ‘monsters’, ‘animals’, and the ‘jungle’ to refer to Palestinians. In one of many such instances, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on 9 October 2023 that his forces are ‘imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly’.

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another advocate from South Africa, described these words as a ‘language of systematic dehumanisation’. This language, alongside the character of Israel’s assault – which has thus far claimed over 24,000 Palestinian lives, displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza, and plunged 90% of the population into acute food security – should provide a sufficient basis for the accusation of genocide.

It is fitting that Adila Hassim’s first name means righteousness or justice in Arabic and Tembeka Ngcukaitobi’s first name means trustworthy in Xhosa.

John Halaka (Palestine), Memories of Memories, 2023.

At the ICJ hearing, Israel was unable to respond credibly to South Africa’s complaint. Tal Becker, a legal advisor to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spent his entire presentation trying to indict Hamas, which is not a party to the dispute. It was Hamas, Becker said, that created the ‘nightmarish environment’ in Gaza – not Israel.

After Israel made its case, the fifteen ICJ judges began their deliberations. The presentations on 11–12 January were merely the prima facie hearing to ascertain whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to a trial, which – if it happens – would likely take years. However, South Africa asked the court to apply ‘provisional measures’, namely an emergency order from the ICJ judges calling on Israel to stop its genocidal attack on Palestinians. This would be a significant blow to Israel’s already diminished legitimacy as well as the legitimacy of its major backer, the United States of America. There is considerable precedence for this measure. In 2019, Gambia was able to get the court to order provisional measures against the government of Myanmar for its attacks on the Rohingya people. The world awaits the court’s verdict.

Ibrahim Khatab (Egypt), Do What You Want Under the Trees, 2021.

The day before the hearings began, the US released a statement saying ‘allegations that Israel is committing genocide are unfounded’. Once more, the US government fully backed Israel, intervening on its behalf not only in words but by providing arms and logistical support for the genocide. That is why South Africa is now preparing a filing against the United States and the United Kingdom to be submitted to the ICJ.

In November 2023, when the genocidal character of the war was already widely accepted across the globe, US Congress passed a $14.5 billion package in military aid to Israel. While the ICJ held its hearing, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told the press that the US will ‘continue to supply [Israel] with the tools and capabilities they need’, which it did – again – as recently as 9 and 29 December, when it transferred additional arms to Israel. When asked about loss of life concerns within Congress, Kirby said that ‘we still see no indication that [Israel is] violating the laws of armed conflict’. Kirby, a former admiral, acknowledged that ‘there are too many civilian casualties’. However, rather than calling to end attacks on civilians, he said that Israel must ‘take steps to reduce that’. In other words, the US has given Israel the green light and carte blanche support, and arms, to do whatever it would like to Palestinians.

When the people of Yemen, led by Ansar Allah, decided to block the movement of ships to Israel through the Red Sea, the US formed a ‘coalition’ to attack Yemen. On the day of South Africa’s presentation at the ICJ, the US bombed Yemen. The message was clear: not only will the US provide unconditional support for the genocide; it will also attack countries that try to put a stop to it.

Shaima al-Tamimi (Yemen), So Close Yet So Far Away, 2018.

The atrocities perpetrated by Israel, as well as the resistance of the Palestinian people, have moved millions across the world to take to the streets, many of them for the first time in their lives. Social media, in almost all the world’s languages, is saturated with content decrying Israel’s terrible actions. The focus of attention does not seem to be diminishing, with 400,000 people marching on the US capitol last weekend in larger numbers than ever in the country’s history. The increasing fervour and scale of these demonstrations have provoked concerns in the Democratic Party that US President Joe Biden will lose not only the Arab American vote in such key states as Michigan, but that liberal-left activists will not support his re-election campaign.

Chie Fueki (Japan), Nikko, 2018

Over the course of the past two years, from the start of the Ukraine War until now, there has been a rapid decline in the West’s credibility. This drop in legitimacy did not begin with the Ukraine War or genocide in Palestine, though both events have certainly accelerated the decline in the authority of the NATO countries. Ansar Allah spokesperson Mohammed al-Bukhaiti posted a video of a pro-Palestine march in New York that is perhaps indicative of the mood in most of the world and wrote: ‘We are not hostile to the American people, but rather to the American foreign policy that has caused the death of tens of millions of people, threatens the security and safety of the world, and also exposes the lives of Americans to danger. Let us struggle together to establish justice among people’.

Since the start of the Third Great Depression in 2007, the Global North has slowly lost its control over the world economy, technology and science, and raw materials. Billionaires in the Global North deepened their ‘tax strike’, siphoning a large share of social wealth into tax havens and unproductive financial investments. This left the Global North with few instruments to maintain economic power, including the ability it once held to make investments in the Global South. Later this month, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research will release a new dossier, The Churning of the Global Order, and a study, Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage, which detail the maladies of the present and the new mood created by the rise of the Global South. The ICJ complaint filed by South Africa and backed by several Global South states is an indication of this mood.

Athier Mousawi (Iraq-Britain), A Point to A Potential Somewhere, 2014.

It is clear to most people in the world that the Global North has failed to address planetary crises, whether the climate crisis or the consequences of the Third Great Depression. It has tried to substitute reality with euphemisms such as ‘democracy promotion’, ‘sustainable development’, ‘humanitarian pause’, and, from UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, the ridiculous formulation of a ‘sustainable ceasefire’. Empty words are no substitute for real actions. To speak of a ‘sustainable ceasefire’ while arming Israel or to speak of ‘democracy promotion’ while backing anti-democratic governments now defines the hypocrisy of the Global North’s political class.

On 12 January, the German government released a statement saying that it ‘firmly and explicitly rejects the accusation of genocide that has now been made against Israel’. In line with the new mood in the Global South, the government of Namibia reminded the Germans that they had ‘committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904–1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions’. This is known as the Herero and Namaqua genocide. Germany, said the government of Namibia, ‘is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil’. Therefore, Namibia ‘expresses deep concern with the shocking decision’ of the German government to reject the indictment of Israel.

Israel, meanwhile, says that it will continue this genocide for ‘as long as it takes’, though its already tenuous justifications continue to deteriorate with increasing rapidity. Behind this violence is the waning legitimacy of the NATO project, whose sanctimonies sound like nails being dragged across a bloodied chalkboard.

PS: Please do not miss the panel discussion based on our recent dossier, Culture as a Weapon of Struggle: The Medu Art Ensemble and Southern African Liberation, which widens the focus from South Africa to Palestine, featuring Wally Serote (poet laureate of South Africa and the founding chairperson of the Medu Art Ensemble), Judy Seidman (cultural worker and member of the Medu Art Ensemble), Clarissa Bitar (award-winning Palestinian oud musician and composer), and Niki Franco (cultural worker). The event will be hosted by our very own Tings Chak as well as Hannah Priscilla Craig of Artists Against Apartheid and livestreamed on 21 January via The People’s Forum YouTube page at 20:00 (Johannesburg), 18:00 (London), 15:00 (São Paulo), and 13:00 (New York). Register here.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

This article was originally published as a newsletter from Ryan Grim. Sign up to get the next one in your inbox.

“Are the airstrikes in Yemen working?” 

It was a simple question, delivered directly to President Joe Biden this afternoon. The president delivered a response that ought to be the epitaph for the period of non-Pax Americana we’ve been living through since the fall of the Soviet Union. 

“Well, when you say, ‘working’ — are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they gonna continue? Yes.”

Biden wasn’t lying. On Thursday, the U.S. led another round of airstrikes in Yemen. “U.S. Central Command forces conducted strikes on two Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed into the Southern Red Sea and were prepared to launch,” CENTCOM posted on X. 

Doubling down on things that haven’t worked, the Biden administration also announced new sanctions on the Houthis, the de facto government in Yemen, along with a new “specially designated global terrorist” label, which makes it difficult for the Houthis to engage in global transactions. 

The designation badly undermines the Saudi–Yemen peace talks and threatens to exacerbate the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Yemen. It also doesn’t make sense: Yemen has been bombed and sanctioned on and off for years, through three presidencies and counting, and the only result has been famine and disease, not a more pliant posture toward the United States or its allies in the region. 

In fact, the Houthis emerged from the conflict stronger than before, a point highlighted by Ben Rhodes recently. The Houthis have not been stellar when it comes to governing, to say the least, and getting into another conflict with the United States lets them off the hook for that and boosts their popularity both domestically and in the region.

There’s zero reason to think these sanctions or these airstrikes will get them to stop their blockade of shipping. It’s amazing to see Biden admit it. “Glad POTUS agrees with me that the strikes are not working. Next time come to Congress instead of McGurk,” Rep. Ro Khanna said on X, referring to Brett McGurk, the Mideast envoy who has overseen this catastrophe yet has somehow still retained his job. 

The way the sanctions are being rolled out has its own story behind it. I joined a background briefing the State Department hosted on the new sanctions, and the transcript is now available. I wanted to highlight one part. From a senior administration official: “This [terror] destination will take effect 30 days from now to allow us to ensure robust humanitarian carveouts are in place so our action targets the Houthis and not the people of Yemen. We are rolling out, as we take this action, unprecedented carveouts and licenses to help prevent adverse impacts on the Yemeni people. The people of Yemen should not pay for the price – pay the price for the actions of the Houthis.”

The State Department has always insisted, against all evidence and common sense, that U.S. sanctions do not harm civilian populations. Yet here is the State Department saying it is adding “unprecedented carveouts” to mitigate the harm of these sanctions to regular people. They said they’ll monitor how effectively they immunize people from harm and reevaluate down the road. But think about what an admission that is: Why are these “unprecedented carveouts” needed if typical sanctions don’t actually harm civilians?

That the State Department is waiting 30 days to implement the sanctions is also noteworthy. The Houthis have said they will cease all attacks on shipping if Israel ceases its attack on Gaza. The U.S., too, has said it wants the Israeli attack on Gaza to wind down. But this 30-day delay suggests the U.S. is not at all confident this attack is winding down anytime soon. In fact, the bombing as described by people inside Gaza seems only to be getting fiercer, with disease and starvation spreading, driven by the Israeli refusal to allow in sufficient aid.

Tomorrow’s episode of Deconstructed is on the rupture inside progressive communities in general post-October 7, and American Jewish communities in particular. It’s a rich conversation with Simone Zimmerman, a former Zionist activist who now leads the Jewish American peace group IfNotNow, and the co-directors of the fascinating new documentary “Israelism.”

If you’re not subscribed to Deconstructed, you can get it on iTunes or wherever else you listen to podcasts.

Ibogaine For Ukraine

The Ukrainian military is experimenting with ibogaine, a psychedelic drug banned in the U.S. but often used to treat opioid use disorder elsewhere, to treat traumatic brain injury, and promote battle readiness. 

To do so, it is partnering with a founder of the Yippie movement, Irvin Dana Beal, a longtime ibogaine advocate. Beal recently traveled to Ukraine to help launch the project. Oleksii Skyrtach, a Ukrainian military psychologist attached to the 57th Motor Infantry Brigade, provided Beal with a letter for immigration authorities to help him move through customs with the drug. 

Ibogaine’s most famous American patient may well be Hunter Biden, who has battled his own drug addiction with help from ibogaine treatment at a Mexican clinic. At low doses, Beal and researchers behind the project believe ibogaine can have salutary effects on traumatic brain injury as well as help with battle readiness. “These guys need something for traumatic brain injury,” Beal said. “But nobody else is willing to fucking go into a war zone with ibogaine but me, apparently.”

Skyrtach agreed. “We really need as much ibogaine as possible,” he said. “Even if the war ends now we’ll have too many ‘rambos’ to come back home from the frontline. It’ll be much more serious problem [than the] USA faced when thousands of veterans came home from the Vietnam war.”

My full story on this fascinating new project is up at The Intercept. 

Earlier this week, I was unable to get in touch with Beal to fact-check a few final details for the article, though we figured out another route to get that done. After the story was published, I learned why he had gone dark: He was arrested in Idaho for marijuana trafficking. He has been working with the state of New York to open up a pot shop, and it’s legal in lots of states — but definitely not in Idaho. The 77-year-old is facing serious charges. 

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah – the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis – as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.

The White House claims the designation is an appropriate response to the group’s attacks on US military vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying those attacks “fit the textbook definition of terrorism”.

Ansarallah claims its actions “adhere to the provisions of Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” since it is only enforcing a blockade geared toward ceasing the ongoing Israeli destruction of Gaza.

One of the most heinous acts committed by the Trump administration was its designation of Ansarallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), both of which imposed sanctions that critics warned would plunge Yemen’s aid-dependent population into even greater levels of starvation than they were already experiencing by restricting the aid that would be allowed in.

One of the Biden administration’s only decent foreign policy decisions has been the reversal of that sadistic move, and now that reversal is being partially rolled back, though thankfully only with the SDGT listing and not the more deadly and consequential FTO designation.

US Re-Designates Houthis as ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorists’
The designation will hamper aid deliveries and could complicate a peace deal between the Saudis and Houthis
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #Houthis #SaudiArabia #RedSea #Gaza https://t.co/6bXDM0MdiU pic.twitter.com/K8mj2itz2f

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) January 17, 2024

In a new article for Antiwar about this latest development, Dave Decamp explains that as much as the Biden White House goes to great lengths insisting that it’s going to issue exemptions to ensure that its sanctions don’t harm the already struggling Yemeni people,

“history has shown that sanctions scare away international companies and banks from doing business with the targeted nations or entities and cause shortages of medicine, food, and other basic goods.”

DeCamp also notes that US and British airstrikes on Yemen have already forced some aid groups to suspend services to the country.

Still trying to recover
So the US empire is going to be imposing sanctions on a nation that is still trying to recover from the devastation caused by the US-backed Saudi blockade that contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths between 2015 and 2022. All in response to the de facto government of that very same country imposing its own blockade with the goal of preventing a genocide.

That’s right: when Yemen sets up a blockade to try and stop an active genocide, that’s terrorism, but when the US empire imposes a blockade to secure its geostrategic interests in the Middle East, why that’s just the rules-based international order in action.

Today, in response to these continuing threats and attacks, the United States announced the designation of Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist – Jake Sullivan, U.S. National Security Advisorhttps://t.co/D5d8MylujK pic.twitter.com/pSFUzCR7qk

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) January 17, 2024

It just says so much about how the US empire sees itself that it can impose blockades and starvation sanctions at will upon nations like Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria and North Korea for refusing to bow to its dictates, but when Yemen imposes a blockade for infinitely more worthy and noble reasons it gets branded an act of terrorism.

The managers of the globe-spanning empire loosely centralised around Washington literally believe the world is theirs to rule as they will, and that anyone who opposes its rulings is an outlaw.

Based on power
“What this shows us is that the “rules-based international order” the US and its allies claim to uphold is not based on rules at all; it’s based on power, which is the ability to control and impose your will on other people.

The “rules” apply only to the enemies of the empire because they are not rules at all: they are narratives used to justify efforts to bend the global population to its will.

We are ruled by murderous tyrants. By nuclear-armed thugs who would rather starve civilians to protect the continuation of an active genocide than allow peace to get a word in edgewise.

Our world can never know health as long as these monsters remain in charge.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The world is split between those who have crafted a self-serving global and regional order that guarantees them impunity whatever their crimes, and those who pay the price for that arrangement.

Now the long-time victims are fighting back at the so-called World Court.

Last week, each side presented its arguments for and against whether Israel has implemented a genocidal policy in Gaza over the past three months.

South Africa’s case should be open and shut. So far Israel has killed or seriously wounded close to 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza, almost one in every 20 inhabitants. It has damaged or destroyed more than 60 percent of the population’s homes. It has bombed the tiny “safe zones” to which it has ordered some two million Palestinians to flee. It has exposed them to starvation and lethal disease by cutting off aid and water.

Meanwhile, senior Israeli political and military officials have openly and repeatedly expressed genocidal intent, as South Africa’s submission so carefully documents.

Back in September, before Hamas’ break-out from the Gaza prison on 7 October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had shown the United Nations a map of his aspiration for what he termed “the New Middle East”. The Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank were gone, replaced by Israel.

Despite the mass of evidence against Israel, it could take years for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to reach a definitive verdict – by which time, if things carry on as they are, there may be no meaningful Palestinian population left to protect.

South Africa has therefore also urgently requested an interim order effectively requiring Israel to stop its attack.

Opposing corners

They are in opposite corners because each drew a different lesson from their respective traumatic historical legacies.

Israel raised its citizens to believe that Jews must join the racist, oppressor nations, adopting a “might makes right” approach to neighbouring states. A self-declared Jewish state sees the region as a zero-sum battleground in which domination and brutality win the day.

It was inevitable that Israel would eventually spawn, in Hamas and groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, armed opponents who view their conflict with Israel in a similar light.

South Africa, by contrast, has aspired to carry the mantel of “moral beacon” nation, that western states so readily ascribe to their top-dog, nuclear-armed Middle Eastern client state, Israel.

South Africa’s first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela, famously observed in 1997: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Israel and apartheid South Africa were close diplomatic and military allies until apartheid’s fall 30 years ago. Mandela understood that the ideological foundations of Zionism and apartheid were built on a similar racial supremacist logic.

He was once cast as a terrorist villain for opposing South Africa’s apartheid rulers, much as Palestinian leaders are by Israel today.

Jackboot of colonialism

It should also not surprise us that lined up in Israel’s corner is most of the West – led by Washington and Germany, the country that instigated the Holocaust. Berlin asked last Friday to be considered a third party in Israel’s defence at The Hague.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s case is backed by much of what is called the “developing world”, which has long felt the jackboot of western colonialism – and racism – on its face.

Notably, Namibia was incensed by Germany’s support for Israel at the court, given that at the outset of the 20th century, the colonial German regime in south-west Africa herded many tens of thousands of Namibians into death camps, developing the blueprint for the genocide of Jews and Roma it would later refine in the Holocaust.

The Namibian president, Hage Geingob, stated: “Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza.”

The panel of judges – 17 of them in total – do not exist in some rarified bubble of legal abstraction. Intense political pressures in this polarised fight will bear down on them.

As former UK ambassador Craig Murray, who attended the two days of hearings, observed: most of the judges looked as if they “really did not want to be in the court”.

‘Nobody will stop us’

The reality is that, whichever way the majority in the court swings in its decision, the crushing power of the West to get its way will shape what happens next.

If most of the judges find it plausible that there is a risk Israel is committing genocide and insist on some sort of interim ceasefire until it can make a definitive ruling, Washington will block enforcement through its veto at the UN Security Council.

Expect the US, as well as Europe, to work harder than ever to undermine international law and its supporting institutions. Imputations of antisemitism on the part of the judges who back South Africa’s case – and the states to which they belong – will be liberally spread around.

Already Israel has accused South Africa of a “blood libel”, suggesting its motives at the ICJ are driven by antisemitism. In his address to the court, Tal Becker of the Israeli foreign ministry argued that South Africa was acting as a legal surrogate for Hamas.

The US has implied much the same by calling South Africa’s meticulous amassing of evidence “meritless”.

On Saturday, in a speech littered with deceptions, Netanyahu vowed to ignore the court’s ruling if it was not to Israel’s liking. “Nobody will stop us – not The Hague, not the axis of evil, and not anybody else,” he said.

On the other hand, if the ICJ rules at this stage anything less than that there is a plausible case for genocide, Israel and the Biden administration will seize on the verdict to mischaracterise Israel’s assault on Gaza as receiving a clean bill of health from the World Court.

That will be a lie. The judges are being asked only to rule on the matter of genocide, the gravest of the crimes against humanity, where the evidential bar is set very high indeed.

In an international legal system in which nation-states are accorded far more rights than ordinary people, the priority is giving states the freedom to wage wars in which civilians are likely to pay the heaviest price. The gargantuan profits of the West’s military-industrial complex depend on this intentional lacuna in the so-called “rules of war”.

If the court finds – whether for political or legal reasons – that South Africa has failed to make a plausible case, it will not absolve Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indisputably, it is carrying out both.

Foot dragging

Nonetheless, any reticence on the part of the ICJ will be duly noted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), its heavily compromised sister court. Its job is not to adjudicate between states like the World Court but to gather evidence for the prosecution of individuals who order or carry out war crimes.

It is currently gathering evidence to decide whether to investigate Israeli and Hamas officials over the events of the past three months.

But for years, the same court has been dragging its feet on prosecuting Israeli officials over war crimes that long predate the current assault on Gaza, such as Israel’s decades of building illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, and Israel’s 17-year siege of Gaza – the rarely mentioned context for Hamas’ break-out on 7 October.

The ICC similarly baulked at prosecuting US and British officials over the war crimes their states carried out in invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.

That followed an intimidation campaign from Washington, which imposed sanctions on the court’s two most senior officials, including freezing their US assets, blocking their international financial transactions and denying them and their families entry to the US.

Terror campaign

Israel’s central argument against genocide last week was that it is defending itself after it was attacked on 7 October, and that the real genocide is being carried out by Hamas against Israel.

Such a claim should be roundly dismissed by the World Court. Israel has no right to defend its decades-long occupation and siege of Gaza, the background to the events of 7 October. And it cannot claim it is targeting a few thousand Hamas fighters when it is bombing, displacing and starving Gaza’s entire civilian population.

Even if Israel’s military campaign is not intended to wipe out the Palestinians of Gaza, as all statements by the Israeli cabinet and military officials indicate, it is nonetheless still directed primarily at civilians.

On the most charitable reading, given the facts, Palestinian civilians are being bombed and killed en masse to cause terror. They are being ethnically cleansed to depopulate Gaza. And they are being subjected to a horrifying form of collective punishment in Israel’s “complete siege” that denies them food, water and power – leading to starvation and exposure to lethal disease – to weaken their will to resist their occupation and seek liberation from absolute Israeli control.

If all of this is the only way Israel can “eradicate Hamas” – its stated goal – then it reveals something Israel and its western patrons would rather we all ignore: that Hamas is so deeply embedded in Gaza precisely because its implacable resistance looks like the only reasonable response to a Palestinian population ever more suffocated by the tightening chokehold of oppression Israel has inflicted on Gaza for decades.

Israel’s weeks of carpet bombing have left Gaza uninhabitable for the vast majority of the population, who have no homes to return to and little in the way of functioning infrastructure. Without massive and constant aid, which Israel is blocking, they will gradually die of dehydration, famine, cold and disease.

In these circumstances, Israel’s actual defence against genocide is an entirely conditional one: it is not committing genocide only if it has correctly estimated that sufficient pressure will mount on Egypt that it feels compelled – or bullied – into opening its border with Gaza and allowing the population to escape.

If Cairo refuses, and Israel does not change course, the people of Gaza are doomed. In a rightly ordered world, a claim of reckless indifference as to whether the Palestinians of Gaza die from conditions Israel has created should be no defence against genocide.

War business as usual

The difficulty for the World Court is that it is on trial as much as Israel – and will lose whichever way it rules. Legal facts and the court’s credibility are in direct conflict with western strategic priorities and war industry profits.

The risk is the judges may feel the safest course is to “split the difference”.

They may exonerate Israel of genocide based on a technicality, while insisting it do more of what it isn’t doing at all: protecting the “humanitarian needs” of Gaza’s people.

Israel dangled just such a technicality before the judges last week like a juicy carrot. Its lawyers argued that, because Israel had not responded to the genocide case made by South Africa at the time of its filing, there was no dispute between the two states. The World Court, Israel suggested, therefore lacked jurisdiction because its role is to settle such disputes.

If accepted, it would mean, as former ambassador Murray noted, that, absurdly, states could be exonerated of genocide simply by refusing to engage with their accusers.

Aeyal Gross, a professor of international law at Tel Aviv University, told the Haaretz newspaper he expected the court to reject any limitations on Israel’s military operations. It would focus instead on humanitarian measures to ease the plight of Gaza’s population.

He also noted that Israel would insist it was already complying – and carry on as before.

The one sticking point, Gross suggested, would be a demand from the World Court that Israel allow international investigators access to the enclave to assess whether war crimes had been committed.

It is precisely this kind of “war business as usual” that will discredit the court – and the international humanitarian law it is supposed to uphold.

Vacuum of leadership

As ever, it is not the West that the world can look to for meaningful leadership on the gravest crises it faces or for efforts to de-escalate conflict.

The only actors showing any inclination to put into practice the moral obligation that should fall to states to intervene to stop genocide are the “terrorists”.

Hezbollah in Lebanon is putting pressure on Israel by incrementally building a second front in the north, while the Houthis in Yemen are improvising their own form of economic sanctions on international shipping passing through the Red Sea.

The US and Britain responded at the weekend with air strikes on Yemen, turning up the heat even higher and threatening to tip the region into a wider war.

With its own investments in the Suez Canal threatened, China, unlike the West, seems desperate to cool things down. Beijing proposed this week an Israel-Palestine peace conference involving a much wider circle of states.

The goal is to loosen Washington’s malevolent stranglehold on pretend “peace-making” and bind all the parties to a commitment to create a Palestinian state.

The West’s narrative is that anyone outside its club – from South Africa and China to Hezbollah and the Houthis – is the enemy, threatening Washington’s “rules-based order”.

But it is that very order that looks increasingly self-serving and discredited – and the foundation for a genocide being inflicted on the Palestinians of Gaza in broad daylight.

• First published in Middle East Eye

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

On January 11, the UK government, in league with the United States with support from a number of other countries, attacked Houthi positions in Yemen.  The decision had been made without recourse to Parliament and justified by Article 51 of the UN Charter as “limited, necessary and proportionate in self-defence”.

In his statement on the attacks, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pointed to the Houthi’s role in staging “a series of dangerous and destabilising attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea, threatening UK and other international ships, causing major disruption to a vital trade route and driving up commodity prices.”  He made no mention of the Houthis’ own justification for the attacks as necessary measures to disrupt Israeli shipping and interests in response to their systematic, bloodcurdling razing of Gaza.

Lip service has been paid by the executive within the Westminster system to Parliament’s importance in deciding whether the country commits to military action or not.  The stark problem is that the action is always decided upon in advance, and no dissent among parliamentarians will necessarily sway the issue.  Motions can be proposed and rejected but remain non-binding on the executive emboldened by the prerogative.

The British decision to commit to the egregious invasion of Iraq in 2003 was already a foregone conclusion, despite preliminary debates in the House of Commons and huge public protests against the measure.  On March 18, 2011, the then British Prime Minister David Cameron informed the House of his intention to attack Libya, leading to a government motion on March 21 that the chamber “supports Her Majesty’s Government […] in the taking of all necessary measures to protect civilians and civilian-protected measures.”

That same year, the then Coalition government in the UK acknowledged that a convention had crystallised in Parliament that the House of Commons should be availed of “an opportunity to debate the matter [of committing troops] and said that it proposed to observe that convention except when there was an emergency and such action would not be appropriate.”

The broadly worded nature of the caveats – in cases of emergency or when it would not be appropriate – have made something of a nonsense of the convention.  In April 2016, Secretary for Defence Michael Fallon made much of the “exception”, arguing that it was “important to ensure that this and future Governments can use their judgment about how best to protect the security and interests of the UK.”

Parliament, in short, should be put in its place when necessary.  Governments know best when it comes to matters of national security; parliamentarians less so.  “In observing the Convention,” Fallon goes on to explain, “we must ensure that the ability of our Armed Forces is to act quickly and decisively, and to maintain the security of their operations, is not compromised.”  In such cases, matters could be dealt with retrospectively, with the government of the day subsequently informing Parliament after the fact.

An example of this absurd policy was played out in the decision by the UK government in April 2018 to target chemical weapons facilities of Syria’s Assad regime.  Hiding behind the weasel word of humanitarianism, the explanation for avoiding Parliament was shoddy and leaden.  “It was necessary,” came the explanation from the PM’s office, “to strike with speed so we could allow our Armed Forces to act decisively, maintain the vital security of their operations, and protect the security and interests of the UK.”

The Yemen strikes eschew humanitarianism (the humanitarian justifications advanced by the Houthis in protecting Palestinian civilians has been rejected), but shipping interests.  The Armed forces minister, James Heappey, was satisfied that an exception to the convention in consulting Parliament had presented itself.  “The Prime Minister,” the minister parroted, “needs to make decisions such as these based on the military, strategic and operational requirements – that led to the timing.”

With the horse having bolted merrily out of the stable, Heappey remarked with all due condescension that Parliament would, in time, be able to respond to the decision to strike Yemen.  An “opportunity” would be made available “when Parliament returns for these things to be fully discussed and debated.”  The sheer redundancy of its role could thereby be affirmed.

Much agitated by this state of affairs, former shadow Chancellor John McDonnell opined that no military action should take place without Parliament’s approval.  “If we have learnt anything in recent years it’s that military intervention in the Middle East always has dangerous & often unforeseen consequences.  There is a risk of setting the region alight.”

Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesperson Layla Moran was of the view that Parliament should not be bypassed in matters of war, yet opting for the rather fatuous formula arising out of the 2011 convention.  “Rushi Sunak must announce a retrospective vote in the House of Commons on these strikes, and recall Parliament this weekend.”

The use of the royal prerogative in using military force remains one of those British perversions that makes for good common room conversation but offends the sensibilities of the democratically minded elector.  A far better practice would be to make the PM of the day accountable to that most essential body of all: Parliament.  That same principle would be extended to other constitutional monarchies, which are similarly weighed down by the all too liberal use of the prerogative when shedding blood.  If a country’s citizens are to go to war to kill and be killed, surely their elected representatives should have a say in that most vital of decisions?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The US has carried out another air raid on Yemen, with targets reportedly including the international airport in the capital city of Sanaa. This comes a day after US and UK airstrikes on Yemen in retaliation for Houthi attacks on Red Sea commercial vessels.

For weeks Yemen’s Houthi forces have been greatly inconveniencing commercial shipping with their blockade, with reports last month saying Israel’s Eilat Port has seen an 85 percent drop in activity since the attacks began.

This entirely bloodless inconvenience was all it took for Washington to attack Yemen, the war-ravaged nation in which the US and its allies have spent recent years helping Saudi Arabia murder hundreds of thousands of people with its own maritime blockades.

• READ MORE: This genocide is being live-streamed. We can’t say we didn’t know
• How the US, UK bombing of Yemen might help the Houthis
• What is South Africa’s five-point ICJ genocide argument against Israel?

Yemen has issued defiant statements in response to these attacks, saying they will not go “unanswered or unpunished”.

The U.S. can have a multi-decade long blockade on Cuba and it’s normalized.

Israel can have a decade and a half long total air, land, and sea blockade on Gaza and it’s normalized.

But Yemenis block some ships to stop a genocide and all the sudden it’s indefensible.

— James Ray (@GoodVibePolitik) January 13, 2024

The Biden administration’s dramatic escalation toward yet another horrific war in the Middle East has been hotly criticised by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who argue that the attacks were illicit because they took place without congressional approval.

This impotent congressional whining will never go anywhere, since, as Glenn Greenwald has observed, the US Congress never actually does anything to hold presidents to account for carrying out acts of war without their approval.

But there are some worthwhile ideas going around.

After the second round of strikes, a Democratic representative from Georgia named Hank Johnson tweeted the following:

“I have what some may consider a dumb idea, but here it is: stop the bombing of Gaza, then the attacks on commercial shipping will end. Why not try that approach?”

By golly, that’s just crazy enough to work. In fact, anti-interventionists have been screaming it at the top of their lungs since the standoff with Yemen began.

All the way back in mid-October Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi was already writing urgently about the need for a ceasefire in Gaza to prevent it from exploding into a wider war in the region, a position Parsi has continued pushing ever since.

“Huge Miscalculation”: Biden’s Refusal to Push for Gaza Ceasefire Could Drag U.S. into Middle East War https://t.co/eJuzswi2BJ

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 8, 2024

As we discussed previously, Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza is threatening to bleed over into conflicts with the Houthis in Yemen, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria, and even potentially with Iran itself – any of which could easily see the US and its allies committing themselves to a full-scale war.

Peace in Gaza takes these completely unnecessary gambles off the table.

And it is absolutely within Washington’s power to force a ceasefire in Gaza. Biden could end all this with one phone call, as US presidents have done in the past. As Parsi wrote for The Nation earlier this month:

“In 1982, President Ronald Reagan was ‘disgusted’ by Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. He stopped the transfer of cluster munitions to Israel and told Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a phone call that ‘this is a holocaust.’ Reagan demanded that Israel withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Begin caved. Twenty minutes after their phone call, Begin ordered a halt on attacks.

“Indeed, it is absurd to claim that Biden has no leverage, particularly given the massive amounts of arms he has shipped to Israel. In fact, Israeli officials openly admit it. ‘All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US,’ retired Israeli Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brick conceded in November of last year. ‘The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability.… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.’ ”

In the end, you get peace by pursuing peace. That’s how it happens. You don’t get it by pursuing impossible imaginary ideals like the total elimination of Hamas while butchering tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

You don’t get it by trying to bludgeon the Middle East into passively accepting an active genocide. You get it by negotiation, de-escalation, diplomacy and detente.

The path to peace is right there. The door’s not locked. It’s not even closed. The fact that they don’t take it tells you what these imperialist bastards are really interested in.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The wording in a White House media release mentions the operation’s purpose and the relevant participants.  “In response to continued illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing Houthi attacks against vessels, including commercial shipping, transiting the Red Sea, the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, with support from the Netherlands, Canada, Bahrain, and Australia, conducted joint strikes in accordance with the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense”.

US Air Forces Central Command further revealed that the “multinational action targeted radar systems, defense systems, and storage and launch sites for one way attack unmanned aerial systems, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.”

The rationale by the Houthis is that they are targeting shipping with a direct or ancillary Israeli connection, hoping to niggle them over the barbarities taking place in Gaza.  As the Israeli Defence Forces are getting away with, quite literally, bloody murder, the task has fallen to other forces to draw attention to that fact.  Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdusalam’s post was adamant that “there was no threat to international navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas, and the targeting was and will continue to affect Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine.”

But that narrative has been less attractive to the supposedly law-minded types in Washington and London, always mindful that commerce trumps all.  Preference has been given to such shibboleths as freedom of navigation, the interests of international shipping, all code for the protection of large shipping interests.  No mention is made of the justification advanced by the Houthi rebels and the Palestinian plight, a topic currently featuring before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Another feature of the strikes is the absence of a Security Council resolution from the United Nations, technically the sole body in the international system able to authorise the use of force under the UN Charter.  A White House statement on January 11 attributes authority to the strikes much the same way the administration of George W. Bush did in justifying the warrantless, and illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  (Ditto those on his same, limited bandwidth, Tony Blair of the UK and John Howard of Australia.)  On that occasion, the disappointment and frustrations of weapons inspectors and rebukes from the UN about the conduct of Saddam Hussein, became vulnerable to hideous manipulation by the warring parties.

On this occasion, a “broad consensus as expressed by 44 countries around the world on December 19, 2023” and “the statement by the UN Security Council on December 1, 2023, condemning Houthi attacks against merchant and commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea” is meant to add ballast.  Lip service is paid to the self-defence provisions of the UN Charter.

In a separate statement, Biden justified the attack on Houthi positions as necessary punishment for “unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea – including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”  He also made much of the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, “a coalition of more than 20 nations committed to defending international shipping and deterring Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.”  No mention of the Israeli dimension here, at all.

In addition to the pregnant questions on the legality of such strikes in international law, the attacks, at least as far as US execution was concerned, was far from satisfactory to some members of Congress.  Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashita Tlaib was irked that US lawmakers had not been consulted.  “The American people are tired of endless war.”  Californian Rep. Barbara Lee warned that, “Violence only begets more violence.  We need a ceasefire now to prevent deadly, costly, catastrophic escalation of violence in the region.”

A number of Republicans also registered their approval of the stance taken by another Californian Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna, who expressed with certitude the view that Biden had “to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle eastern conflict.”  Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah was in full agreement, as was West Virginia Republican Rep. Thomas Massie.  “Only Congress has the power to declare war,” Massie affirmed.

Unfortunately for these devotees of Article I of the US Constitution, which vests Congress approval powers for making war, the War Powers Act, passed by Congress in November 1973, merely requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of military action, and the termination of such action within 60 days of commencement in the absence of a formal declaration of war by Congress or authorisation of military conflict.  These days, clipping the wings of the executive when it comes to engaging in conflict is nigh impossible.

There was even less of a debate about the legality or wisdom of the Yemen strikes in Australia.  Scandalously, and with a good deal of cowardice, the government preferred a deafening silence for hours in the aftermath of the operation.  The only source confirming that personnel of the Australian Defence Forces were involved came from Biden, the commander-in-chief of another country.  There had been no airing of the possibility of such involvement.  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had, in not sending a warship from the Royal Australian Navy to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, previously insisted that diplomacy might be a better course of action.  Evidently, that man is up for turning at a moment’s notice.

In a brief statement made at 4.38 pm on of January 12 (there was no press conference in sight, no opportunity to inquire), Albanese declared with poor conviction that, “Australia alongside other countries has supported the United States and the United Kingdom to conduct strikes to deal with this threat to global rules and commercial shipping.”  He had waited for the best part of a day to confirm it to the citizenry of his country.  He had done so without consulting Parliament.

Striking the Houthis would seem, on virtually all counts, to be a signal failure.  Benjamin H. Friedman of Defense Priorities sees error piled upon error: “The strikes on the Houthis will not work.  They are very unlikely to stop Houthi attacks on shipping.  The strikes’ probable failure will invite escalation to more violent means that may also fail.”  The result: policymakers will be left “looking feckless and thus tempted to up the ante to more pointless war to solve a problem better left to diplomatic means.”  Best forget any assuring notions of taking the sting out of the expanding hostilities.  All roads to a widening war continue to lead to Israel.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

On January 11th, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is holding its first hearing in South Africa’s case against Israel under the Genocide Convention. The first provisional measure South Africa has asked of the court is to order an immediate end to this carnage, which has already killed more than 23,000 people, most of them women and children. Israel is trying  to bomb Gaza into oblivion and scatter the terrorized survivors across the Earth, meeting the Convention’s definition of genocide to the letter.

Since countries engaged in genocide do not publicly declare their real goal, the greatest legal hurdle for any genocide prosecution is to prove the intention of genocide. But in the extraordinary case of Israel, whose cult of biblically ordained entitlement is backed to the hilt by unconditional U.S. complicity, its leaders have been uniquely brazen about their goal of destroying Gaza as a haven of Palestinian life, culture and resistance.

South Africa’s 84-page application to the ICJ includes ten pages (starting on page 59) of statements by Israeli civilian and military officials that document their genocidal intentions in Gaza. They include statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Herzog, Defense Minister Gallant, five other cabinet ministers, senior military officers and members of parliament. Reading these statements, it is hard to see how a fair and impartial court could fail to recognize the genocidal intent behind the death and devastation Israeli forces and American weapons are wreaking in Gaza.

The Israeli magazine +972 talked to seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials involved in previous assaults on Gaza. They explained the systematic nature of Israel’s targeting practices and how the range of civilian infrastructure that Israel is targeting has been vastly expanded in the current onslaught. In particular, it has expanded the bombing of civilian infrastructure, or what it euphemistically defines as “power targets,” which have comprised half of its targets from the outset of this war.

Israel’s “power targets” in Gaza include public buildings like hospitals, schools, banks, government offices, and high-rise apartment blocks. The public pretext for destroying Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is that civilians will blame Hamas for its destruction, and that this will undermine its civilian base of support. This kind of brutal logic has been proved wrong in U.S.-backed conflicts all over the world. In Gaza, it is no more than a grotesque fantasy. The Palestinians understand perfectly well who is bombing them – and who is supplying the bombs.

Intelligence officials told +972 that Israel maintains extensive occupancy figures for every building in Gaza, and has precise estimates of how many civilians will be killed in each building it bombs. While Israeli and U.S. officials publicly disparage Palestinian casualty figures, intelligence sources told +972 that the Palestinian death counts are remarkably consistent with Israel’s own estimates of how many civilians it is killing. To make matters worse, Israel has started using artificial intelligence to generate targets with minimal human scrutiny, and is doing so faster than its forces can bomb them.

Israeli officials claim that each of the high-rise apartment buildings it bombs contains some kind of Hamas presence, but an intelligence official explained, “Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so.” As Yuval Abraham of +972 summarized, “The sources understood, some explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks.”

Two days after South Africa submitted its Genocide Convention application to the ICJ, Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich declared on New Year’s Eve that Israel should substantially empty the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and bring in Israeli settlers. “If we act in a strategically correct way and encourage emigration,” Smotrich said, “if there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza, and not two million, the whole discourse on “the day after” will be completely different.”

When reporters confronted U.S. State Department spokesman Matt Miller about Smotrich’s statement, and similar ones by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Miller replied that Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have reassured the United States that those statements don’t reflect Israeli government policy.

But Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s statements followed a meeting of Likud Party leaders on Christmas Day where Netanyahu himself said that his plan was to continue the massacre until the people of Gaza have no choice but to leave or to die. “Regarding voluntary emigration, I have no problem with that,” he told former Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon. “Our problem is not allowing the exit, but a lack of countries that are ready to take Palestinians in. And we are working on it. This is the direction we are going in.”

We should have learned from America’s lost wars that mass murder and ethnic cleansing rarely lead to political victory or success. More often they only feed deep resentment and desires for justice or revenge that make peace more elusive and conflict endemic.

Although most of the martyrs in Gaza are women and children, Israel and the United States politically justify the massacre as a campaign to destroy Hamas by killing its senior leaders. Andrew Cockburn described in his book Kill Chain: the Rise of the High-Tech Assassins how, in 200 cases studied by U.S. military intelligence, the U.S. campaign to assassinate Iraqi resistance leaders in 2007 led in every single case to increased attacks on U.S. occupation forces. Every resistance leader they killed was replaced within 48 hours, invariably by new, more aggressive leaders determined to prove themselves by killing even more U.S. troops.

But that is just another unlearned lesson, as Israel and the United States kill Islamic Resistance leaders in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Iran, risking a regional war and leaving themselves more isolated than ever.

If the ICJ issues a provisional order for a ceasefire in Gaza, humanity must seize the moment to insist that Israel and the United States must finally end this genocide and accept that the rule of international law applies to all nations, including themselves.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

As the new year began, an official from the White House expressed satisfaction at what appeared “to be the start of the gradual shift to lower-intensity operations in the north that we have been encouraging”.  But the revised Israeli approach did not “reflect any changes in the south”.  The monstrous death toll, in short, would continue to rise.

As Washington feigns a reproachful attitude to the IDF’s grossly lethal tactics, claiming success in restraining them, another, failing front is also being pursued in the Arab world and beyond.  As Israel’s great defender, the US is attempting to hold back fury and consternation as the dirty deeds by their favourite ally in the Middle East are being executed.

Blinken’s latest round of travelling has the flavour of swinging by tetchy neighbours to see how they are faring in the sea of blood and acrimony.  The itinerary includes Istanbul, Crete, Amman, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Al-’Ula, Tel Aviv, the West Bank, Manama and Cairo.  The State Department’s media release on January 4 outlines the obsolete agenda any sensible diplomat would do best to discard.  “Throughout his trip, the Secretary will underscore the importance of protecting civilian lives in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza; securing the release of all remaining hostages; our shared commitment to facilitating the increased, sustained delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza and the resumption of essential services; and ensuring that Palestinians are not forcibly displaced in Gaza.”

So far, Palestinians are being massacred by the IDF in Gaza, forcibly deprived of life-saving humanitarian assistance and essential services in a sustained act of strangulation while being forcibly displaced.  They are being oppressed, harassed and murdered by vigilante Israeli settlers in the West Bank, even as the army looks the other way.

It follows that Blinken is telling tall stories and hoping that legs carry them far.  They are also being told as proceedings before the International Court of Justice instituted by South Africa commence to determine whether Israel’s conduct in Gaza satisfies the definition of genocide in international law.

The strategy becomes clearer in the second part of the disingenuous traveller’s agenda.  Blinken “will also discuss urgent mechanisms to stem violence, calm rhetoric, and reduce regional tensions, including deterring Houthi attacks on commercial shopping in the Red Sea and avoiding escalation in Lebanon.”

The Houthi attacks and the increasingly violent situation in Lebanon serve as golden distractions for Washington, since they give the Biden administration room to simultaneously claim to be preventing a widening of the conflict while permitting Israel’s butchery to continue.

Corking the conflict, however, is not proving such a success.  The war is widening, even if reporting on the subject remains sketchy in the negligently lazy news outlets of the Anglosphere.  In addition to the bold moves of the Houthis and escalating violence on the border between Israel and Lebanon come ongoing, harrying efforts from the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.  An Al-Mayadeen report on January 7 took note of an announcement from the group, also known as the Iraqi al-Najuba Movement, that it had fired an al-Arqab long-range cruise missile at Haifa “in support of our people in Gaza and in response to the massacres committed by the usurping entity against Palestinian civilians, including children, women, and the elderly.”

A spokesperson for the Iraqi Resistance, Hussein al-Moussawi, was bullish in claiming that the group had the capacity to strike targets beyond Haifa.  Conditions to develop the group’s weapons had also been “favourable”.

In a separate statement, the Islamic Resistance also revealed that its fighters had targeted an Israeli base on the occupied Golan Heights, usin drones.  To this can be added drone attacks on the US army base of Qasrok, located in the countryside of Hasakah in northeastern Syria, and the Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq.  The base continues to host US forces.

Perhaps the greatest canard of all in this briefest of trips by Blinken is the continued, now absurd claim, that Washington is committed “to working with partners to set the conditions necessary for peace in the Middle East, which includes comprehensive, tangible steps towards the realization of a future Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel, with both living in peace and security.”

In his remarks to President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Blinken showed the hardened ignorance that will ensure the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue in some form.  In his mind, a “reformed” Palestinian Authority will take over the reins of a ruined Gaza (“effective responsibility”) whatever the residents of Gaza think.

Palestinians will never, given current conditions, be permitted sovereignty and anything remotely resembling a thriving, viable state.  Israel, whose very existence is based on predation, dispossession and war, will never permit a Palestinian entity to be given equal standing at the diplomatic or security table.  The US, in the tatty drag of an independent broker, will go along with the pantomime, promoting, as Blinken is, a sham, counterfeit form of autonomy, one forever subject to conditions, demarcations and restraints.  And one thing is almost certain about any future rump Palestinian entity: it will be deprived of any right to defend itself.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Israel, however, has been spared any toothy sanctions regime over its conduct in Gaza.  If anything, the Biden administration in Washington has been brightly enthusiastic in sending more shells to the Israeli Defence Forces, despite Congressional reservations and some grumbling within the Democratic Party.  This has made such figures as Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who has a long-standing association with the health system in Gaza, wonder why the wealthy states of the West exempt Israel from financial chastisement while economically punishing other powers, such as Russia, without reservation.  “Where are the sanctions against the war crimes of Israel?” he asks.  “Where are the sanctions against the occupation of Palestine?  Where are the sanctions against these abhorrent attacks on civilian healthcare in Gaza?”

The retaliatory initiative has tended to be left to protests at the community level, typified by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement created in 2005.  The war in Gaza, however, has resulted in a broader efflorescence of interest.  Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems have become specific targets of international protest. On December 21, a global coalition of groups under the umbrella of Progressive International took a day of action against the country’s largest arms company, drawing attention to the tentacular nature of the enterprise in the US, UK, Europe, Brazil and Australia.

Restricting the docking of Israeli shipping at ports, notably from ZIM Integrated Shipping Services, has also presented an opportunity to the protest movement.  Actions have been organised as far afield as Australia where “Block the Boat” measures have taken place.  During the early evening of November 8, several hundred protesters flocked to the entrance of Melbourne’s international container terminal.  On catching sight of a ZIM-branded shipping container, the protestors staged a blockade lasting till the morning of the next day.  A similar action was repeated in Sydney on November 11, involving several hundred protestors holding the line on the shores of Port Botany and delaying the arrival of a ZIM vessel.

The assessments that followed the protest were mixed.  Zacharias Szumer, writing in Jacobin, admits that such blockades, on their own, “are unlikely to cause a major dint in ZIM’s bottom line.”  That said, he is confident enough to see it as part of a globalised effort which “can cumulatively make a difference.”

Then came the sceptical voices who felt that these actions fell dramatically short of substance and effect, a product of righteous, ineffectual tokenism.  An anonymous contribution to the New Socialist, purporting to be from one of the protestors, went so far as to call the “Block the Boat” strategy misguided, since it never actually entailed blocking vessels.  The promotional materials for the events “indicated that the purpose was actually to say somebody should ‘Block the Boats’, and to ‘call for’ a boycott – a message addressed to ZIM and Albanese.”  The writer, clearly agitated, also took issue with the choice of locations (they “weren’t conducive to disruption”) and the “suspiciously rigid, and convenient” timing of the rallies.

Short of these efforts, it is precisely the absence of responses at the highest levels that has precipitated a more global reaction that is upending the order of things.  Beyond the protests of activists, community groups, and the more generally outraged come the more direct, state-sponsored measures that have rattled financiers, the carriers and the operators.  The crisis in the Red Sea, for instance, where Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels (Ansar Allah), are putting the brakes on international shipping, is the stellar example.  While the measure initially began on November 14 to target Israeli-affiliated merchant shipping, largescale operators have not been spared.  “Unlike previous piracy related events in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden this is a sophisticated military threat and requires a very sophisticated response,” states a briefing note from Inchcape Shipping Services.

The disruptions are significant, given that 30 percent of all container ship traffic passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen, the point where both the Red Sea and Indian Ocean meet.  The actions and threats by the Houthis have seen various oil and gas companies reroute their tankers. Decisions are even being made to suspend shipping through that route in favour of the safer, though costlier and longer route via the Cape of Good Hope.  Insurance premiums are also on the rise.

The Egyptians are also raising fees for those using the Suez Canal for the new year.  In an October announcement, the SCA promised an increase of between 5-15%, effective from January 15, 2024.  The measure is applicable to a fairly comprehensive list of vessel categories, including crude oil tankers, petroleum product tankers, liquefied petroleum gas carriers, containerships and cruise ships.

On December 20, Malaysia, as if heeding the “Block the Boat” protests, announced that it would be preventing Israeli-flagged cargo ships from docking at the country’s ports.  Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the decision in a statement, with a specific reference to ZIM.  “The Malaysian government decided to block and disallow the Israeli-based shipping company ZIM from docking at any Malaysian port.”  Such sanctions were “a response to Israel’s actions that ignore basic humanitarian principles and violate international law through the ongoing massacre and brutality against Palestinians.”

Malaysia also announced, in addition to barring ships using the Israeli flag from docking in the country, the banning of “any ship on its way to Israel from loading cargo in Malaysian ports.”

Blockade, barring, embargo, constriction – all these measures are familiar to the Israeli security establishment as it seeks to strangle and pulverize the Gaza Strip.  While closing ports to Israeli shipping is modest in comparison to starving and strafing an entire population, it is fittingly reciprocal and warranted.  The Israel campaign against Gaza, and Palestinians more generally, is no longer a local, contained affair.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Houthis, Youtube screengrab from VOA.

When my husband and I were producing the pro-West Beirut (Lebanon) Daily Star, one of Yemen’s tyrannical kings was ruling from an elaborate barber’s chair. Its few exports were chiefly coffee, cotton, and hides, but also postage stamps for international collectors. One of its most infamous imports we interviewed was California’s outspoken and dramatic ex-patriot Bruce Conde Chalmers . He was a former U.S army intelligence specialist, an avid stamp collector and designer, who claimed royal Bourbon bloodlines, and then served as an advisor and soldier for the king.

He had just made Mideast headlines by tearing up his US passport on a charge of American “imperial exploitation” in the region. Yemen had “exported” him as a spy. A dozen other countries blocked him at airports except for Lebanon whose soft-hearted government let him live at the Beirut airport. Conde was stateless until the king relented, letting him return to his beloved Asir mountains rugged coastal chain (elevation: 2,000-12,000 ft. ) to live with the ferocious, puristic Shiite sect.

“Conde” had converted to Islam and was the first to tell us how that sect—today’s Houthis—fought royal corruption and repression on one hand and, on the other, the Saudis’ perpetual tries at border acquisitions. Indeed, the Houthis had been rebelling against royal impurities and the Saudis since the ninth century up to recently. The mountains were ideal for guerrilla training and hiding for their many military successes, enhanced in 1990 after a series of coups united north and south Yemen. They’re now said to control 80 percent of this feisty country.

We lost track of Conde who had moved to Spain for research and writing, then to Tangier, Morocco where he died in August 1992. He and hundreds of “Old Mideast hands” were right, of course, about the U.S imperialist alliances to control Mideast raw resources and covertly aid

’s eventual plan to eradicate Palestinians and/or drive them into the Sinai desert. Above all, he warned about ever tangling with Yemenis on the ground. We now know from the U.S.-aided Saudis that they are indestructible despite air attacks and coastal blockades on the Red Sea.

The U.S. allied with the Saudis because of its critical needs for oil and support for seizing Iraq’s vast reserves when it launched both Gulf and 9/11 wars. In quiet retaliation, Russia and Iran have since supplied the Houthis with drones, ballistic missiles, and helicopters to serve as “mosquito-coast” proxies against the U.S. and Israel. They knew those “gifts” to Yemen would also unnerve the Saudis, their acquisitive, bitter northern neighbor.

Attacks Resemble Somalis

The Houthis’ recent attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea is somewhat similar to the Somali pirates operating off Africa’s eastern waterways from 2005 to 2012 (212 boardings in 2011 alone). They suddenly stopped only to reappear last November and be caught after fleeing a targeted freighter. Somalis had received no such “gifts,” relying on personal weaponry (pistols, Kalashnikov rifles, light machine guns) and specialized only in ransom of ships and crews, not hijacking cargos or safe-passage bribes. The World Bank reported their take from 2005-12 was $400 million which cost the “world economy” an annual $18 billion.

By contrast, the Houthi mission has been political: to sink merchant ships traversing up the Red Sea and the Suez Canal carrying military materiél chiefly to Israel for its Gaza genocide of Palestinians. This maritime “inconvenience” is forcing shippers to spend two extra weeks, plus increasing significant fuel costs and insurance rates by having to sail around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and through Gibraltar to reach Mediterranean markets.

Both missions, however, are a derring-do resurrection of the 1785-1815 Barbary Pirate Wars along North Africa’s coast.

Now, piracy dares back to Phoenician trading days as a lucrative, if dangerous, profession, particularly after Columbus brought booty back to Spain from the New World. Thieves used small boats and their murderous crews to lay waiting just off southern Europe for subsequent ships with cargoes of stolen gold and other precious goods stripped from New World lands and people. These coastal highwaymen would come alongside a ship, board it, and greet the startled crew with: “daggers in each hand and a third in his mouth, which usually struck such terror in the foe that they cried out for quarter at once,” when Thomas Jefferson wrote about the Barbary brigands in 1786 as the ambassador to France.

Historically , the Barbary pirates were largely fierce Berber tribesmen joined by Turks drawn to adventure and profits, and Moslems driven from Spain. They were strung along the coasts of Spain and North Africa (today’s Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya). In collusion with Barbary State leaders, they controlled commercial traffic bound for Mediterranean ports by demanding annual “tribute” and “gifts” from shippers’ safe passage through Gibraltar to eastern port cities. Those refusing such extortion risked losing their ships, having sailors either ransomed (@ $1,200-2,920) or sold as slaves, often for pirate galleys.

Foreign businessmen shrugged off such extortion shrugged and factored it in as a business expense, along with paying for protection services by French, British or Portuguese navies . Not colonial America merchants, however, particularly after the Revolution when Britain barred such help. The French were caught up in their own revolution. Only the Portuguese navy remained, thanks to a friendly queen .

Jefferson Besieged by American Merchants

In Paris, Jefferson seemed to have taken the brunt of incensed American merchants’ complaints, increasing by the month. They apparently were not about to pay ship owners for cannons and rifles to protect the cargoes. Unless the pirates were wiped out, they argued, American commerce would be literally “dead in the water.”

He then tried in vain to enlist Italy, Portugal and “weaker naval powers” into a U.S. coalition to militarily wipe out the pirates and Barbary States. He fumed to friend James Monroe in Congress that American naval action sweeping the North African coast would put an end to the Barbary gangsters:

“ this will require a protecting force on the sea. Otherwise the smallest powers in Europe, every one which possesses a single ship of the line may dictate to us, and enforce their demands by captures on our commerce. Some naval force then is necessary if we mean to be commercial. Can we have a better occasion of beginning one?”

He also wrote John Adams, then ambassador to Britain, that he had four basic reasons for strongly suggesting to president Washington and Congress to resurrecting the Revolution’s navy to defend American business. They are still used today to justify U.S. wars and “temporary” occupations: justice, honor, global respect, and presidential power to coerce “delinquent members” of Congress into declaring wars.

However, the practical Adams initially opposed that action. “A war would cost ten times more than paying tribute,” he said . He also doubted whether taxpayers or Congress would approve starting a new navy just to protect businessmen’s profits in far-off lands.

Congress Takes Two Years to Resurrect the U.S. Navy

Adams’ Congressional colleagues agreed with him so tenaciously that it took two years of heated debates for spending over $45 million (in 2023 values) to build six 38-gun frigates and 10 galleys to resurrect the U.S. Navy largely on behalf of America’s businesses, as well as their financial backers, the shipbuilders and arms factories—and war lovers.

Undoubtedly, floor arguments initially opposed defending business interests: The new nation had just ended a nearly eight-year war with Britain at immense cost in blood and indebtedness and decommissioned its wartime navy. It had few tax dollars in the treasury so far to pay for a new navy—or army. And unpaid financiers and banks would balk at new loans for the government. True, French, British, and Portuguese kings and parliaments could order their navies to fight piracy, but in the U.S. only Congress had that power. Too, if businesses paid “shotguns” to protect goods in overland stagecoaches and wagons, let them pay their shippers for small arms, cannons, and gunners to drive off foreign hijackers.

The rebuttals involved the traditional pro-business views resting on growing the young nation’s economy: jobs, raw-material purchases by factories and stores, expansion of the country, national pride and respect abroad, and import-export trade of finished goods and agricultural products and livestock

In Jefferson’s day as well as Biden’s, enormous lobbying efforts and campaign donations by businesses and accompanying profiteers—banks and financiers, ship owners and builders, war lovers— obviously changed Congressional thinking. It was backed up by their public rallying cry of “Millions for Defense, Not one cent for Tribute” . And the Constitution’s approval in 1789 gave Congress power to punish pirates, declare war, to raise and support Armies, to provide and maintain a Navy, and regulate both.

So in the end, “business interests” won Congress’ vote for the Naval Act of 1794 (House: ; Senate: 30-0 ). President Washington signed it on March 27, authorizing a resurrected U.S. Navy and construction of those frigates and galleys.

By using 1805 as a reference year, total cost to taxpayers for waging the Barbary Wars from 1785-1815 has been estimated at $1 million ($27 billion in 2024). It covered passage protection, naval operations, and shipping disruptions.

Businesses Never Reimbursed Government and Taxpayers

Outside of lobbying and donation expenses, affected businesses apparently never reimbursed the government and taxpayers, something that Adams as president never demanded. He set the precedent for all future presidents.

The same result can be expected if Biden’s dealings with the Houthis’ shore-side batteries continue to follow Jefferson’s footsteps in dealing with the Barbary pirates: First, move in the “big sticks” (two carrier strike forces ) with an international coalition to increase strength and share costs under the business mantra of “freedom of navigation in the Red Sea region.”. Then, let the Marines lead the ground counterattacks in coastal Yemen’s mountains (presumably singing “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli”).

He’s already ordered Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on December 18 to announce the formation of another coalition-of-the-willing (interestingly called the Operation Prosperity Guardian ), claiming 10 nations have already joined to guarantee “security challenges in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden bolstering…prosperity.”

But, like Jefferson, that effort has begun to unravel immediately. Spain was miffed at not being consulted before inclusion and, instead, favored the European Union (EU) to run any anti-Houthi operation. French officials said its ships would remain under its command. Italy wants to act independently, and long-time ally Australia passed on membership.

Four days later, 31 American anti-war movements contacted Biden to “rule out” any military escalation in Yemen. Many Congressional Republicans want an end to military aid to the Russo-Ukrainian war, playing to Americans tired of blood-and-treasure wars lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. It’s shown today in the regular massive demonstrations against aiding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The group’s message to Biden pointed out:

“While these [Houthi] attacks are concerning, expanding the war into Yemen will not resolve them and instead may dramatically worsen the threats to commercial shipping both in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and other regional waterways….A full-blown open-ended regional war would be horrific and undoubtedly entail significant casualties to U.S. forces and civilian populations across the region…”

Knowing the demonstrations will only increase on this possible new invasion and bloodbath, Biden’s advisors might well follow John Adams’ view of never using a blunderbuss on a mosquito. Instead, let the destroyer gunners do target practice on Houthi attacks and munitions depots until, like the Somalians, they stop. Then, bill those businesses for services rendered.

The post Yemen’s Houthis Become Today’s Red Sea Version of the ‘Barbary Pirates’ appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

We look at how Israel’s war on Gaza has inflamed tensions in the Middle East and threatens to pull other countries into the fighting, including the United States. The Pentagon says it has intercepted a number of drones and missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi forces — known as Ansar Allah — in the Red Sea aimed at disrupting international shipping, with the group vowing to continue the attacks on ships in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The U.S. and Israel have also exchanged fire with groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, and violence continues to increase in the occupied West Bank. The growth of forces openly fighting against Israel and the U.S. is a major development in the Middle East that most Western commentators do not fully understand, says Rami Khouri, a veteran Palestinian American journalist and a senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut. This “axis of resistance” is largely motivated by outrage over the treatment of Palestinians, he says. “The U.S. and Israel at some point need to acknowledge that the Palestinian people have rights that are equal to the Israeli people.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Washington has made no secret of the fact that it wants to keep Iran away from Israel’s predations by deterring any provocative moves from Teheran’s proxies.  But Israel’s murderous war in the Gaza Strip is not exactly selling well, and a special coalition is being seen as something of a distracting trick.  But even within this assembly of states, the messages are far from uniform.

France’s Defence Minister, for instance, has promised that its ships would remain under French command, supplementing an already pre-existing troop presence.  Italy’s Defence Ministry, in sending the naval frigate Virginio Fasan to the Red Sea, has its eye on protecting the interests of Italian shipowners, clarifying that the deployment would not take place as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian.  Likewise Spain, which has noted that EU-coordinated and NATO-led missions took priority over any unilateral Red Sea operation.

To that end, the Australian government has been unusually equivocal.  In recent months, the tally of obedience to wishes from Washington has grown.  But on the issue of sending this one vessel, the matter was far from certain.  Eventually, the decision was made to keep the focus closer to home and the Indo-Pacific; no vessel would be sent to yet another coalition effort in the Middle East led by the United States.

The sentiment, as reported in The Guardian Australia, was that Australia would reduce its naval presence in the Middle East “to enable more resources to be deployed in our region.”  In doing so, Canberra was merely reiterating the position of the previous Coalition administration.

In October 2020, the Morrison government announced an end to the three-decades long deployment of the Royal Australian Navy in the Middle East.  Then Defence Minister Linda Reynolds revealed that Australia would no longer be sending a RAN ship to the Middle East on an annual basis, and would withdraw from the US-led naval coalition responsible for patrolling the Strait of Hormuz by 2020’s end.

It was good ground for Australia’s current Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, to build on.  In his words, “We’ve actually consulted our Australian Defence Force heads about these matters and with our American friends.  That’s why you’ve seen no criticism from the US administration”.  When pressed for further clarification about the allegedly inadequate state of Australia’s naval capabilities, the PM simply affirmed the already guaranteed (and dangerous) commitment of Canberra to “the Indo-Pacific, a fairly large region that we look after” with “our American friends.”

The warmongers were particularly irate at the modest refusal.  Where there is war, they see no reason for Australia not to participate.  And if it concerns the United States, it follows, by default, that it should concern Australian military personnel and the exercise of some fictitious muscle.  This slavish caste of mind has dominated foreign policy thinking in Canberra for decades and asserted itself in an almost grotesque form with the surrender of sovereignty to the US military industrial complex under the AUKUS agreement.

The Coalition opposition, displeased with Albanese’s decision, had no truck for diplomacy.  Lurking behind their reasoning were script notes prepared for them by the US-Israeli concern that Iran, and its Houthi allies, be kept in their box.  “Is Mr Albanese seriously claiming that Australia can assert diplomatic influence over the Houthi rebels?” asked the Shadow Minister for Defence Andrew Hastie and the Shadow Treasurer, Angus Taylor.

In the Murdoch press, two-bit, eye-glazing commentary on Australia neglecting its duties to the US war machine in distant seas could be found in frothy fury.  Here is Greg Sheridan, more cumbersome than ever, in The Australian: “We are saying to the Americans and the Brits – under AUKUS we expect you to send your most powerful military assets, nuclear submarines, to Australia to provide for our security, but we are so small, so lacking in capability and so scared of our own shadow, that under no circumstances can we spare a single ship of any kind to help you protect commercial shipping routes – from which we benefit directly – in the Red Sea.”

The Royal Australian Navy, Sheridan splutters, is simply not up to the task.  One of its eight ANZAC frigates is almost never in the water.  The RAN is short of crews and short of “specialist anti-drone capabilities.”  The implication here is evident: the government must, in the manner of Viv Nicholson’s declaration on her husband winning the football pools in 1961, “spend, spend, spend.”

Paul Kelly, another Murdoch emissary also of the same paper, was baffled about the “character” of the Labor government when it came to committing itself to the Middle East.  The Albanese government should have been more bloodthirsty in its backing of Israel’s war against Hamas.  It dared back, along with 152 other UN member states, “an Arab nation resolution calling for ‘an immediate humanitarian ceasefire’ – a resolution, given its wording, that was manifestly pro-Palestinian.”

What struck Kelly as odd, suggesting the glaring limits of his understanding of foreign relations, was that Australia did not commit to the coalition to protect shipping through the Red Sea because it does not have the naval capability to do so.  But armchair pundits always secretly crave blood, especially when shed by others.  And to have members of the RAN butchered on inadequate platforms was no excuse not to send them to a conflict.

Aspects of Sheridan’s remarks are correct: Australian inadequacy, the fear of its own shadow.  The conclusions drawn by Sheridan are, however, waffling in their nonsense.  It is precisely such a fear that has led the naval and military establishment fall for the notion that Canberra needs nuclear-propelled boats to combat the spectre of a Yellow-Red Satan to the north.  With a good degree of imbecility, an enemy has been needlessly created.

The result is that Australian insecurity has only been boosted.  Hence more military contracts that entwine, even further, the Australian military with the US Armed Forces.  Or more agreements to share military technology that give Washington a free hand in controlling the way it is shared.  In history, Albanese’s refusal to commit the RAN to the Red Sea will be seen as a sound one.  His great sin will be the uncritical capitulation of his country to US interests in the Indo-Pacific.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

At Westminster the other day the UK Secretary of State for Defence (Grant Shapps) made a statement on military deployments to the Middle East which included questions and answers about the situation in Gaza. It was an opportunity for Shapps with help of pro-Zionist MPs to distort the facts to ‘justify’ Israel’s appalling crimes.

The following exchanges are taken from Hansard which, for those who don’t know, is the official and “substantially verbatim” report of what is said in the UK Parliament.

Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP) commented: “It is important to repeat the denunciation of the death cult known as Hamas.”

Shapps replied: “The hon. Gentleman is right to stress the abominable, disgraceful, disgusting behaviour of Hamas.” [Shapps is Jewish]

Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con): “Those on both Front Benches seem to agree that Hamas must not remain in control in Gaza. Is any thought being given to how, once they have been removed, they can be prevented from coming back?” [Lewis is also Jewish]

Shapps: The easiest way to bring this to an end, as I hinted earlier, would be for Hamas, a terrorist organisation, to release the hostages that they have, to stop firing rockets into Israel in a completely indiscriminate way, which I think the whole House should condemn.”

Sir Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con): “The Houthis, who are attacking British and American cargo ships, and Hamas are basically two sides of the same coin. They are Iranian-funded, Iranian-trained and, of course, Iranian-guided terrorist groups that are publicly committed to the destruction of Israel…. I particularly welcome the UK’s deployment of drones to help locate hostages, including British hostages. In the days after 7 October, the Defence Secretary said: ‘No nation should stand alone in the face of such evil.’ Will he repeat that crucial support today and in the difficult days ahead? I thank him for his support. [Ellis is Jewish and also a member of Conservative Friends of Israel].

Shapps: My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right that no nation should stand alone. It is easy to forget how this all began, when the Hamas terrorist group thought it was a plan to go into Israel to butcher men, women and children, cut off heads and rape people.

Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con): “I applaud the decisive actions of my right hon. Friend and the Government to defend our strategic ally, Israel, against Hamas, but the grim reality on the ground right now is that Hamas continue to fire dozens of rockets at Israeli towns and cities. The Iran-backed terror group have fired more than 10,000 rockets since 7 October and show no sign of stopping their violent attacks against Israel. Will my right hon. Friend not only commit to continuing his support for Israel in defending itself against Hamas, but reassure the House that every possible step is being taken to counter Iran’s links across the region, which are causing instability?”

Shapps: “My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that the conflict would be over immediately if hostages were released and Hamas stopped firing rockets into Israel—there would not be a cause for conflict. Indeed, that is the policy Israel followed for many years, hoping that, even though rocket attacks continued, Hamas would not take advantage of their own population by using them as human shields and building infrastructure under hospitals, schools and homes…. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to identify Iran as being behind this whole evil business.”

Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD): “It was reassuring last week, in answer to my question, to hear the Minister for Armed Forces, the right hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey) telling us that UK surveillance flights would not involve the use of intelligence for target acquisition. I also welcome the Secretary of State talking today about how information that would be helpful to hostage recovery will be passed to the so-called appropriate authorities. We have now heard two questions about the International Criminal Court. Will the UK pass any evidence that it gathers of any breaches of international humanitarian law by combatants in Gaza to the ICC?“

Shapps: “As the hon. Gentleman says, that question has been asked, and I have answered it a couple of times. The intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – ISR – flights are to look for British hostages and indeed other hostages. That is the information that will be gathered from those flights. Of course, if we saw anything else, we would most certainly alert our partners“. [But do they include the ICC? I think not.]

Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP): “Yesterday I asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), whether the UK Government were in a position to contribute to the International Criminal Court’s call for evidence in its investigation of potential breaches of international humanitarian law. He said: ‘Not at this stage, but we will continue to take note.’ Surely, if the UK Government are actively collecting drone and surveillance images of the war zone, the answer to that question should have been yes?”

Shapps: “I would have thought that the No. 1 concern would be to locate the British hostages, and that is where the surveillance work will focus.”

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind): “The Secretary of State needs to be very clear with the House: 15,000 people have already died in Gaza, and 1,200 have died in Israel. Israel is clearly pushing the entire population southwards, if not out of the Gaza strip altogether. Is Britain involved in the military actions that Israel has taken, either physically or by providing information in support of those military activities? I think the House needs to be told. What is the long-term aim of British military involvement in Gaza?”

Shapps: “The simple answer is no, and I hope that clears it up. I am surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman talk just about people being killed. They were murdered. They were slaughtered. It was not just some coincidental thing. I understand and share the concerns about the requirement on Israel, on us and on everyone else to follow international humanitarian law. When Israel drops leaflets, when it drops what it calls a “knock” or a “tap” and does not bomb until afterwards, when it calls people to ask them to move, when it issues maps showing where Hamas have their tunnels and asks people to move away from them, that is a far cry from what Hamas did on 7 October, when they went after men, women and children.”

Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab): “We have seen increased bombardment in southern Gaza after the pause. We are also seeing increased violence in the West Bank, supported by extremist settler Ministers. What talks is the Secretary of State having with Israel to stop the increase in settler violence in the West Bank?“

Grant Shapps: “I certainly will not be pulling my punches when I speak to my Israeli counterparts. The violence in the West Bank is unacceptable and it must be controlled—stopped, in fact. None of that, in any way, shape or form, separates us from our utter condemnation of how this whole thing was started in the first place with Hamas, but the hon. Lady is right about that settler violence.”

Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP): “Medical Aid for Palestinians has warned that Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and siege is making it impossible to sustain human life in Gaza. With 1.8 million civilians displaced and a lack of clean water and sanitation, it is just a matter of time before a cholera outbreak kills many thousands more. The Secretary of State has been unequivocal that the main purpose of surveillance is to help find hostages, which is fine, but for the fifth time of asking: if clear evidence is found of breaches of humanitarian law, will the UK Government share that evidence with the International Criminal Court?

Shapps: “The simple answer is that we will always follow international humanitarian law and its requirements.”

Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP): “It is absolutely right that those responsible for the crimes of Hamas are held to account in international law. But why is the Secretary of State so reluctant to give a clear, simple “yes” to the question whether the Government will provide any evidence of war crimes to the International Criminal Court? Is it because he has already seen such evidence? Is it because Israel has asked him to promise not to share such evidence? What is the reason?”

Grant Shapps: “I have already said that the United Kingdom is bound by, and would always observe, international humanitarian law.

The message we are supposed to swallow from this pantomime is that it’s all the fault of Hamas and Iran who “started the whole thing” on 7 October, and that Israel’s massacres, brutal occupation using military force, cruel blockade and clear intention of establishing Jewish sovereignty “from the river to the sea” over the last 75 years have nothing to do with it. It is clear that the UK will do everything to avoid upsetting Israel’s evil plan and calling the regime’s war criminals to account despite our solemn obligations under international law to do so.

And it is pointless for the likes of Shapps to keep repeating that Israel “has to follow international humanitarian law” when Israel has been in permanent breach of nearly all aspects of law for decades and treats international norms with utter contempt. Only today the regime announced approval of 1700 more ‘settlement’ homes in East Jerusalem which is Palestinian territory. And it continues to defy international law, escalating its crimes to the most abhorrent of all – genocide – because it is given cover by the US and UK. Perhaps the rest of us should properly label Israel’s genocide in Gaza as ‘US and UK-backed’. And the UK itself ignores international law if it happens to be ‘inconvenient’.

As for the constantly repeated claim the Israel has a right to defend itself, this is blatant misinformation. Israel is an illegal military occupier and aggressor committing never-ending war crimes on someone else’s sovereign territory. Its right to self-defence is practically zero in these circumstances. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has stated that “Israel cannot claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it occupies – from a territory that is kept under belligerent occupation”.

And notice how everything the Israelis dislike, and everything that thwarts their lust for domination, is now labeled “Iranian-backed” or “Hamas controlled”. Shapps is evidently well versed in the 116-page propaganda manual produced by The Israel Project (TIP) and written specially for those “on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel”. Its purpose is to help the worldwide Zionist movement win the propaganda war by persuading international audiences to accept the Israeli narrative and agree that the regime’s crimes are necessary for Israel’s security and in line with “shared values” between Israel and the West.

This masterwork on deception attempts to justify Israel’s slaughter, ethnic cleansing, land-grabbing, cruelty and blatant disregard for international law and United Nations resolutions, and make it all smell sweeter with a liberal squirt of persuasive language. It also incites hatred, particularly towards Hamas and Iran, and is designed to hoodwink Americans and Europeans into believing we actually share values with the racist regime, and therefore ought to support and forgive its abominable behaviour.

Readers are instructed to “clearly differentiate between the Palestinian people and Hamas” and to drive a wedge between them. The manual features “words that work” – i.e. carefully constructed language to deflect criticism and reframe all issues and arguments in Israel’s favour. We are seeing it at work here with great success.

MPs who are Jewish are identified as such when it seems appropriate. Those, like Sir Michael Lewis mentioned above, who are signed-up Friends of Israel should, in my opinion, declare that interest in any debate on the subject. But I must emphasise that not all Jewish MPs are tools of the apartheid regime. We remember with admiration Sir Gerald Kaufman who was arguing for economic sanctions against Israel back in 2004. And during a debate on the Gaza war of 2008/9, he told the Commons: “The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians… My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza”.

He described Hamas as a “deeply nasty organisation” but said the UK Government’s boycott of Hamas had “dreadful consequences”, and he reminded the Commons that Israel had been created following acts of terrorism by the Irgun. He considered Iran a loathsome regime but, unlike Israel, “at least it keeps its totalitarian theocracy to within its own borders”.

As to why there are so many Israel lackeys in Westminster Kaufman said: “It’s Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party. There is now a big group of Conservative members of parliament who are pro-Israel…. whatever the Israeli government does.”

Of course, it’s not just the Conservative Party. The corrupting influence of dodgy funding is also affecting Labour and the LibDems.

Remembering the victims of genocide

This week marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Genocide Convention. As explained on the United Nations website:

Every 9 December the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide marks the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – a crucial global commitment that was made at the founding of the United Nations, immediately preceding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By General Assembly Resolution A/RES/69/323 of 29 September 2015, that day also became the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.

At its landmark 75th anniversary this year, the Genocide Convention remains highly relevant. The 1948 Genocide Convention codified for the first time the crime of genocide in international law. Its preamble recognizes that “at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity” and that international cooperation is required to “liberate humankind from such an odious scourge”. To date, 153 States have ratified the Convention. Achieving universal ratification of the Convention, as well as ensuring its full implementation, remain essential for effectively advancing genocide prevention. The Genocide Convention includes the obligation not only to punish the crime of genocide but, crucially, to prevent it. In the 75 years since its adoption, the Genocide Convention has played an important role in the development of international criminal law, in holding perpetrators of this crime accountable, galvanizing prevention efforts, and in giving a voice to the victims of genocide.

How many parliamentarians in Westminster and Washington who blindly support Israel’s attempts to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza and turn their homeland into rubble will publicly show respect for those victims of the apartheid regime’s genocide?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

While Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has been frantically shuttling around the Middle East trying to stop the Israeli conflict in Gaza from exploding into a regional war, the United States has also sent two aircraft carrier strike groups, a Marine Expeditionary Unit and 1,200 extra troops to the Middle East as a “deterrent.” In plain language, the United States is threatening to attack any forces that come to the defense of the Palestinians from other countries in the region, reassuring Israel that it can keep killing with impunity in Gaza.

But if Israel persists in this genocidal war, U.S. threats may be impotent to prevent others from intervening. From Lebanon to Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran, the possibilities of the conflict spreading are enormous. Even Algeria says it is ready to fight for a free Palestine, based on a unanimous vote in its parliament on November 1st.

Middle Eastern governments and their people already see the United States as a party to Israel’s massacre in Gaza. So any direct U.S. military action will be seen as an escalation on the side of Israel and is more likely to provoke further escalation than to deter it.

The United States already faces this predicament in Iraq. Despite years of Iraqi demands for the removal of U.S. forces, at least 2,500 U.S. troops remain at Al-Asad Airbase in western Anbar province, Al-Harir Airbase, north of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, and another small base at the airport in Erbil.  There are also “several hundred” NATO troops, including Americans, advising Iraqi forces in NATO Mission Iraq (NMI), based near Baghdad.

For many years, U.S. forces in Iraq have been mired in a low-grade war against the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) that Iraq formed to fight ISIS, mainly from Shia militias. Despite their links to Iran, the armed groups Kata’ib Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and other PMFs have often ignored Iranian calls to de-escalate attacks on U.S. forces. These Iraqi groups do not respect Iran Quds Force leader General Esmail Qaani as highly as they did General Soleimani, so Soleimani’s  assassination by the United States in 2020 has further reduced Iran’s ability to restrain the militias in Iraq.

After a year-long truce between U.S. and Iraqi forces, the Israeli war on Gaza has triggered a new escalation of this conflict in both Iraq and Syria. Some militias rebranded themselves as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and began attacking U.S. bases on October 17. After 32 attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq, 34 more in Syria and 3 U.S. airstrikes in Syria, U.S. forces conducted airstrikes against two Kata’ib Hezbollah bases in Iraq, one in Anbar province and one in Jurf Al-Nasr, south of Baghdad, on November 21, killing at least nine militiamen.

The U.S. airstrikes prompted a furious response from the Iraqi government spokesman Bassam al-Awadi. “We vehemently condemn the attack on Jurf Al-Nasr, executed without the knowledge of government agencies,” al-Awadi said. “This action is a blatant violation of sovereignty and an attempt to destabilize the security situation… The recent incident represents a clear violation of the coalition’s mission to combat Daesh (ISIS) on Iraqi soil. We call on all parties to avoid unilateral actions and to respect Iraq’s sovereignty…”

As the Iraqi government feared, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq responded to the U.S. airstrikes with two attacks on Al-Harir airbase on November 22 and several more on November 23rd. They attacked Al-Asad airbase with several drones, launched another drone attack on the U.S. base at Erbil airport, and their allies in Syria attacked two U.S. bases across the border in northeastern Syria.

Short of a ceasefire in Gaza or a full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Syria, there is no decisive action the U.S. can take that would put a stop to these attacks. So the level of violence in Iraq and Syria is likely to keep rising as long as the war on Gaza continues.

Another formidable and experienced military force opposing Israel and the United States is the Houthi army in Yemen. On November 14, Abdul-Malek al-Houthi, the leader of the Houthi government in Yemen, asked neighboring countries to open a corridor through their territory for his army to go and fight Israel in Gaza.

The Houthi Deputy Information Secretary Nasreddin Amer told Newsweek that if they had a way to enter Palestine, they would not hesitate to join the fight against Israel, ”We have fighters numbering hundreds of thousands who are brave, tough, trained and experienced in fighting,” Amer said. “They have a very strong belief, and their dream in life is to fight the Zionists and the Americans.”

Transporting hundreds of thousands of Yemeni soldiers to fight in Gaza would be nearly impossible unless Saudi Arabia opened the way. That seems highly unlikely, but Iran or another ally could help to transport a smaller number by air or sea to join the fight.

The Houthis have been waging an asymmetric war against Saudi-led invaders for many years, and they have developed weapons and tactics that they could bring to bear against Israel. Soon after al-Houthi’s statement, Yemeni forces in the Red Sea boarded a ship owned, via shell companies, by Israeli billionaire Abraham Ungar. The ship, which was on its way from Istanbul to India, was detained in a Yemeni port.

The Houthis have also launched a series of drones and missiles towards Israel. While many members of Congress try to portray the Houthis as simply puppets of Iran, the Houthis are actually an independent, unpredictable force that other actors in the region cannot control.

Even NATO ally Türkiye is finding it difficult to remain a bystander, given the widespread public support for Palestine. President Erdogan of Türkiye was among the first international leaders to speak out strongly against the Israeli war on Gaza, explicitly calling it a massacre and saying that it amounted to genocide.

Turkish civil society groups are spearheading a campaign to send humanitarian aid to Gaza on cargo ships, braving a possible confrontation like the one that occurred in 2010 when the Israelis attacked the Freedom Flotilla, killing 10 people aboard the Mavi Marmara.

On the Lebanese border, Israel and Hezbollah have conducted daily exchanges of fire since October 7, killing 97 combatants and 15 civilians in Lebanon and 9 soldiers and 3 civilians in Israel. Some 46,000 Lebanese civilians and 65,000 Israelis have been displaced from the border area. Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant warned on November 11, “What we’re doing in Gaza, we can also do in Beirut.”

How will Hezbollah react if Israel resumes its brutal massacre in Gaza after the brief pause is over or if Israel expands the massacre to the West Bank, where it has already killed at least 237 more Palestinians since October 7?

In a speech on November 3, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah held back from declaring a new war on Israel, but warned that “all options are on the table” if Israel does not end its war on Gaza.

As Israel prepared to pause its bombing on November 23, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian held meetings in Qatar, first with Nasrallah and Lebanese officials, and then with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

In a public statement, Amirabdollahian said, “the continuation of the ceasefire can prevent further expansion of the scope of the war. In the meeting with the leaders of the resistance, I found out that if Israel’s war crimes and genocide continue, a tougher and more complicated scenario of the resistance will be implemented.”

Amirabdollahian already warned on October 16 that, “The leaders of the resistance will not allow the Zionist regime to do whatever it wants in Gaza and then go to other fronts of the resistance.”

In other words, if Iran and its allies believe that Israel really intends to continue its war on Gaza until it has removed Hamas from power, and then to turn its war machine loose on Lebanon or its other neighbors, they would prefer to fight a wider war now, forcing Israel to fight the Palestinians, Hezbollah and their allies at the same time, rather than waiting for Israel to attack them one by one.

Tragically, the White House is not listening. The next day, President Biden continued to back Israel’s vow to resume the destruction of Gaza after its “humanitarian pause,” saying that attempting to eliminate Hamas is “a legitimate objective.”

America’s unconditional support for Israel and endless supply of weapons have succeeded only in turning Israel into an out-of-control, genocidal, destabilizing force at the heart of a fragile region already shattered and traumatized by decades of U.S. war-making. The result is a country that refuses to recognize its own borders or those of its neighbors, and rejects any and all limits on its territorial ambitions and war crimes.

If Israel’s actions lead to a wider war, the U.S. will find itself with few allies ready to jump into the fray. Even if a regional conflict is avoided, the U.S. support for Israel has already created tremendous damage to the U.S. reputation in the region and beyond, and direct U.S. involvement in the war would leave it more isolated and impotent than its previous misadventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The United States can still avoid this fate by insisting on an immediate and permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. If Israel will not agree to that, the U.S. must back up this position with an immediate suspension of arms deliveries, military aid, Israeli access to U.S. weapons stockpiles in Israel and diplomatic support for Israel’s war on Palestine.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

A delegation from Saudi Arabia has arrived in Yemen's capital Sana'a alongside Omani negotiators with the aim of reaching a resolution to the protracted war in Yemen. This marks a major turning point in a conflict that began more than eight years ago and has been characterized as a stalemate between Yemen's Houthis and a coalition of anti-Houthi forces backed and led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

This arguably unexpected turn of events—surprising given Saudi Arabia's yearslong war against a group they characterize as "Iran-allied rebels"—is the result of talks that began in early 2022 between the Saudi Arabian government and Yemen's government in Sanaa, led by Ansar Allah—also known as the Houthis. The Houthis have in effect been ruling much of northern Yemen for the past eight years.

This is "the closest Yemen has been to real progress towards lasting peace," Hans Grundberg, the United Nations envoy to Yemen, remarked.

This is "the closest Yemen has been to real progress towards lasting peace," Hans Grundberg, the United Nations envoy to Yemen, remarked to the Associated Press earlier this month. Grundberg urged both parties to "start an inclusive political process under U.N.auspices to sustainably end the conflict."

While the terms of any settlement have yet to be made public, this moment signals the seriousness of the talks and the likelihood of a lasting political agreement among warring parties following years of asymmetrical warfare in which hundreds of thousands of Yemenis were killed, millions more were starved, and Yemen was virtually left in ruins.

War and Famine

In the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring, peaceful countrywide protests began in Yemen that eventually ended with Yemen's longtime dictator, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, transferring power to his then-Vice President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi in 2011.

In the following years, Hadi clinged to power after failing to address the demands of all of the country's various factions. Meanwhile, Ansar Allah rose to power following protests against the government's curbing of fuel subsidies, and eventually seized the capital Sanaa in late 2014, and forced Hadi into house arrest.

Despite these tumultuous events, a U.N.-negotiated settlement was reached between Hadi, the Houthis, and other factions, but this settlement was derailed. Soon after the new Saudi king appointed his son, Mohammed bin Salman, as deputy crown prince and defense minister in early 2015, Saudi Arabia amassed a coalition of several neighboring countries and, together with Western support—primarily from the Obama administration—launched airstrikes against the Houthis and imposed a naval blockade targeting food, medicine, fuel, and other essential supplies in an effort to reinstate Hadi as the main head of the government. This was ratified in U.N. resolution 2216, which provided cover for these attacks and the imposition of the blockade under the guise of an "arms embargo."

Meanwhile, Hadi fled to Riyadh and continued to enjoy Saudi support for years to come, while the UAE trained and funded the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group whose stated goals are to secede from the Yemeni union.

Despite full military support from the United States and other allies, including weapon sales, intelligence, logistics, training, targeting support, and, until late 2018, mid-air refueling, the Saudi-led coalition failed to capture Yemen's most populous region from the Houthis. The Houthis, on the other hand, joined forces with their longtime enemy, former president Saleh, and formed a government and armed resistance to the Saudi-led coalition.

With more than 17 million people facing food insecurity in 2022, the U.N. warned that "catastrophic" and "famine-like" conditions were projected to increase fivefold for those most vulnerable.

Even after their fallout and subsequent killing of Saleh in December 2017 after he switched to the Saudi coalition's side, the Houthis continued to control much of the pre-1990 unity north Yemen, where 70% to 80% of the population resides. However, the Houthis' attempts to capture Marib, a key oil- and gas-rich province, failed.

As the fighting continued and the blockade on Yemen was tightened, the Yemeni population faced a crumbling economy and destruction of its healthcare systems. This led to outbreaks such as cholera and diphtheria, reduced functional healthcare facilities to 50%, and left more than 80% of Yemenis in need of food, water, and medicine. With more than 17 million people facing food insecurity in 2022, the U.N. warned that "catastrophic" and "famine-like" conditions were projected to increase fivefold for those most vulnerable.

Previous Talks

In early 2022, after a series of Saudi-led attacks that killed at least 80 civilians and shut down Yemen's internet for four days, and Houthi attacks that reached an oil facility in Jeddah and a storage facility in Abu Dhabi, warring parties began ceasefire talks in Oman.

Though far from being the first peace—a ceasefire agreement was reached in April 2022, and extended twice until October of that year—they brought a halt to U.S.-supported airstrikes for the first time since March 2015.

Despite the U.S. and Saudi's insistence that this war was waged on behalf of Hadi—Yemen's "legitimate" head of government—he was virtually powerless and remained in Riyadh since leaving Yemen in 2015. This facade came down when the Saudi and UAE governments set aside Hadi and replaced him with a council of eight men, all of whom were backed by Saudi Arabia or the UAE. While the council was formed to unify anti-Houthi groups given that most had already waged battles against the Houthis, their conflicting interests soon led to in-fighting, especially in Shabwa where UAE-backed STC forces fought Saudi-backed Islah forces.

Peace Now?

In the year since the first ceasefire was achieved in 2022, fighting on the ground continued in key southern areas including Shabwa and al-Mahra. And when Houthi demands to pay government workers their long overdue salaries using oil and gas revenues were not met, they responded by attacking oil facilities to prevent the export of oil and gas.

Now, this key condition seems to have been met in a draft deal last month, and reports of a roadmap toward peace include issuing payments to government employees using gas and oil revenues in exchange for the Houthis allowing exports to take place.

But to achieve a lasting peace deal, Yemen's sovereignty must be restored and the blockade must be fully lifted.

But to achieve a lasting peace deal, Yemen's sovereignty must be restored and the blockade must be fully lifted. While talks with Saudi Arabia are a major first step toward alleviating Yemenis' suffering, the UAE must also give up control over strategic areas such as Bab al-Mandab strait and the island of Socotra, which they occupied and recently militarized.

The coalition's failure to consolidate power among warring groups in southern Yemen, which they have controlled since 2015, underscores the importance of ceasing all foreign intervention and financial backing of warring factions. This includes the U.S.'s role, which has been instrumental in furthering the war over the past eight years despite legislative efforts to end this unconstitutional involvement.

While the meetings in Sanaa between Saudi and Houthi officials hold promise for peace with the Saudi-led coalition, a meaningful end to the war can only take place when all Yemenis who fought on either side of the war—the Houthis, Saleh, and Hadi's General People's Congress, the Islah party, the STC, and others—face one another in direct talks and draft a way forward without the financial and military backing of foreign governments. When overt and covert foreign interventions cease, Yemen will finally have a chance to chart its own course.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Shireen Al-Adeimi.

A U.N.-brokered two-month truce in Yemen is now in its second week. The U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels both agreed to halt all offensive operations inside Yemen and across its borders. Fuel ships are now being allowed to enter into Hodeidah ports, and the airport in Sana’a is reopening. Over the past six years, the U.N. estimates the war in Yemen has killed nearly 400,000 people — many from hunger. We speak with Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the human rights organization Democracy for the Arab World Now, who says the truce deal, which is the first of its kind, is a “tremendously positive development.” She says domestically it still remains to be seen whether the U.N.’s attempt to establish a new government structure will hold as the U.N. has so far excluded Houthis from the negotiations.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

On January 25, Houthi forces raided and shuttered at least five radio stations in Sanaa, the capital, according to the Media Freedom Observatory nongovernmental organization, a statement from the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate trade group, and syndicate co-chair Nabil Alosaidi, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

The Houthi forces shut down the broadcasters Voice of Yemen, Grand FM, Al-Oula, Tufula FM, and Al-Diwan, allegedly for failing to renew their licenses, according to those sources. Alosaidi also said that Houthis had shuttered the Delta broadcaster, but CPJ could not immediately verify whether that outlet had been targeted.

Alosaidi said that the channels all remained closed as of Monday, January 31.

“Houthi raids on radio stations in Sanaa demonstrate how the militant group will leave no stone unturned in their harassment of the Yemeni press,” said CPJ Senior Middle East and North Africa Researcher Justin Shilad. “The Houthis must allow all radio stations to resume their work immediately and without preconditions, and must stop targeting Yemeni journalists once and for all.”

Alosaidi said that the Houthis, formally known as the Ansar Allah group, had previously demanded the outlets pay taxes and additional fees, and broadcast pro-Houthi propaganda. Those outlets normally air programming on news, culture, and entertainment.

In its statement, the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate said that the Houthis started regulating media outlets in 2017, despite lacking any legal basis to do so.

Previously, Houthi gunmen stormed the TV broadcaster Yemen Today in December 2017 and held at least 40 employees hostage for several days, as CPJ documented at the time. The group has repeatedly threatened journalists with execution, regularly detains members of the press, and has forced journalists to leave areas under their control.

CPJ emailed Houthi spokesperson Mohammad Abdulsalam for comment, but did not immediately receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Yesterday, journalist Rasha Abdullah al-Harazi was killed in a car bomb attack while she was driving through the Khor Makser neighborhood of the southern port city of Aden, according to reports by Reuters, The Associated Press, and the independent Yemeni newspaper Al-Masdar.

Al-Harazi was pregnant at the time, those reports said. Her husband, Mahmoud al-Atmi, who is also a journalist, was seriously injured in the blast and has been hospitalized, according to those reports.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the AP.

“Rasha Abdullah al-Harazi’s horrific killing and Mahmoud al-Atmi’s grievous injuries illustrate how Yemeni journalists face death daily by simply living in their home country and covering the news,” said CPJ Senior Middle East and North Africa Researcher Justin Shilad. “All parties to Yemen’s conflict must stop killing journalists, and international institutions and their member states must stop burying their heads in the sand and immediately work toward accountability for these crimes.”

Al-Harazi worked for the Emirati news channels Al-Ain and Al-Sharq, according to the AP and a report by the Saudi satellite news channel Al-Arabiya. She worked as a photographer and camera operator for Al-Ain, and also for the U.A.E.-based Bloomberg Asharq, a collaboration between the U.S. business news wire and the Saudi government-tied Saudi Research and Media Group, according to a person familiar with her work who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing security reasons.

Al-Atmi contributes to Al-Arabiya and the Saudi news channel Al-Hadath, according to that Al-Arabiya report.

Al-Atmi previously received threats from the Ansar Allah group, known as the Houthis, according to Al-Masdar. After the attack, Yemeni journalist Bassem al-Janani posted screenshots on Twitter purporting to show al-Atmi describing how members of the Houthis had been asking for information about his address in Aden and a description of his car.

Al-Janani wrote that he told al-Atmi to leave Aden, but al-Atmi responded that he could not because his wife was about to give birth to their second child.

CPJ contacted al-Janani via messaging app, but did not immediately receive any response.

Initial reports stated that the couple’s son Jawad was also killed in the blast, but the person who spoke to CPJ said that Jawad was not in the car at the time.

Aden is controlled by the secessionist Southern Transitional Council, a group that agreed to a power-sharing arrangement with the internationally recognized Yemeni government in 2019; that deal was never fully implemented, and the council operates autonomously with its own security forces and allied militias, according to news reports.

When contacted via messaging app, Southern Transitional Council spokesperson Mansour Saleh told CPJ that the council strongly condemned the bombing and that its security forces were investigating it.

Southern Transitional Council President Aydarous al-Zubaidi ordered the council to cover the costs of al-Atmi’s medical treatment, Saleh said.

At least 19 journalists have been killed in Yemen since conflict broke out in 2014, and at least two were killed in Aden last year, according to CPJ research.

Last month, the U.N. Human Rights Council voted to end the mandate for the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen, in effect removing the only independent international accountability mechanism for human rights abuses committed by all sides during the conflict.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Origins of War

Hadi administration’s territorial weakness reflects the failure of the 6-year long Saudi-UAE war against Yemen. The origins of the war can be traced back to 2011 when Arab Spring protests erupted in Yemen. Authoritarian president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had survived in power since 1978, was forced to resign. He stepped aside in favor of Hadi, who was his vice president from 1994 to 2011. Hadi’s interim government was legitimized by way of a February 21, 2012, referendum in which his was the only name on the ballot.

From the day he assumed power, Hadi began a process of brutal neoliberalization. He steamrolled Yemen into membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2012, bringing about egregious amounts of austerity and untrammeled liberalization. Hadi’s first wave of privatizations included 11 of the 12 main sectors of the Yemeni economy with 78 of the 160 subsectors included for immediate liberalization. His open embrace of the World Bank exposed Yemeni companies to competition in the “free market,” a move that promised tens of thousands of layoffs.

The Hadi government combined a neoliberal orientation with the undemocratic imposition of a new politico-legal structure. Early in Hadi’s mandate, the government arbitrarily rewrote many of Yemen’s laws, including setting in motion a process of federalization designed to benefit specific constituencies and forever weaken those regions known for resisting Yemen’s economic subordination to Saudi and Qatari interests. Faced with these unprecedented abuses of executive powers, millions of Yemenis supported the Houthi movement.

Houthis represent a religious revivalist movement within the Zaydi branch of Shi‘i Islam led by the sons of Badr al-Din al-Huthi, a notable Zaydi scholar, in the Sa‘ada province on the Saudi border. In the 1990s, Zaydi resistance to Saleh was spearheaded by Hussein al Houthi. Radicalized by the US War on Terror and invasion of Iraq, Houthis founded Ansar Allah, or “Supporters of God”, and engaged in a tireless guerrilla war against Saleh, whom it decried as a puppet of Washington and Riyadh. Thousands joined the Ansar Allah’s ranks, taking its estimated number of fighters from 10,000 to 100,000 by 2010.

American and international monitoring groups sent down to “assist” in the post-2011 transition openly condemned the popular AnsarAllah, referring to it as an “armed group” in the attempt to delegitimize it. There were even formal efforts to side-line AnsarAllah in the subsequent National Dialogue Conference (NDC) held between March 18, 2013, and January 24, 2014.

The outright persecution of Houthis proved to be counterproductive, resulting in the formation of a temporary and unstable alliance between the ousted Saleh and AnsarAllah. Even after resigning from the presidency, Saleh retained a lot of support within the security services. In September 2014, Houthi militias, in alliance with Saleh, took over government buildings in the capital while the army stood by.

It is important to note that when the forces allied with AnsarAllah entered Sana‘a’ they did not formally remove Hadi as interim President. Rather, they established committees that demanded the immediate establishment of a timeframe for elections, an immediate halt to the frantic selling off of Yemen’s assets, and review of all new laws instituted during the Hadi period.

The Saleh-Houthi association unraveled after two years. On December 3, 2017, Saleh announced he was switching sides, leaving his two-year long alliance with the Houthis and joining Hadi and the Saudis. The Houthis quickly routed his forces in the capital and blew up his house. The next day they stopped him at a checkpoint and killed him too, announcing that they had also avenged al-Houthi – killed by Saleh’s military in 2004.

Genocide

Hadi fled to Aden and appealed to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi for military assistance. Saudis and Emiratis proceeded to assemble an alliance of Middle Eastern and African states – Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Eritrea, Morocco, Senegal, Somalia and Sudan – acting in the name of Hadi’s government – exiled in Riyadh. The first Saudi air strikes were launched on 26 March, 2015 to prevent Aden falling to Saleh’s Republican Guards. This was the beginning of genocide.

The Saudi intervention in Yemen was propelled by the monarchy’s domestic concerns. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), staked his prestige to a Saudi victory. Just prior to the war, King Salman took the throne and appointed his son MBS as defense minister. MBS appeared on Saudi television the day after the bombing began; he was in the military operations centre, on the phone, talking to pilots, looking at maps — trying to show that he really was in charge.

Within days of starting the war, Saudi Arabia imposed a total land, air and sea blockade, along with targeting vital agriculture and food supply infrastructure that sustains life for the 29 million Yemenis – all of which constitute war crimes under international law. Yemen imports 80% of its food. The Saudis intercept and impound some aid ships for periods up to 100 days. Other ships are never allowed to dock in Yemen. The delays the naval blockade creates cause food prices to soar, making them unaffordable to most Yemenis.

Half of Yemen’s hospitals and medical clinics have been destroyed or forced to close since the coalition bombing began. Public health personnel and hospital facilities have been attacked, leading to the closure of health facilities. According to the organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), 92-95% of medical equipment in Yemeni hospitals and health facilities no longer functions. Over 50% of Yemenis do not have access to healthcare, and the other half has access to a “compromised healthcare system” that lacks the personnel, medicine and medical equipment necessary to treat the population’s basic health needs. The coalition bombs cranes used in Yemeni ports, making it impossible to unload medicine.

In a nutshell, the effects of the imperialist war against Yemen have been devastating: cholera and hunger have arrived on a scale that has not been seen since the last century, with some 20 million experiencing food insecurity and 10 million at risk of famine. An estimated 110,000 have been killed in the fighting, with a death toll of 233,000 overall, mostly due to indirect causes such as lack of food and health services.

Saudi Arabia has justified the saturation bombing of Yemen by claiming that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy. Given that the Saudis and local allies control the Gulf of Aden, Iranian ships laden with weapons cannot travel all the way to northern Yemen and Sana’a. The same applies to the airspace, which is entirely controlled by the Saudis. While Iran may have managed to send some support and advisors, it is absurd to describe the Houthis as Iranian-backed. Moreover, the Saudi usage of the Iranian bogeyman stokes the sectarian flames of the Shite-Sunni narrative and elides a deeper analysis of the problems plaguing Yemen after the 1990 unification.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Yemen, the genocidal impact of the war has combined with an epidemiological crisis to generate a perfect storm for Yemenis. However, Yemeni lives don’t matter for the rulers sitting at the helm of our brutal system. War profiteers are least concerned about what happens in Yemen as long as they are able to sell a full range of arms that kill human beings and destroy nations. Without concerted action, the genocide in Yemen will continue, with the profits accruing to the arms industries.

This article was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2021 at 5:25pm and is filed under Genocide, Islam, Militarism, Saudi Arabia, Yemen.

In 1937 the Nazis, in support of Franco in Spain, bombed the defenseless northern Spanish town of Guernica, massacring hundreds of civilians gathered in the town on market day. Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica, a shriek of protest against the slaughter, is one of the world’s best known anti-war works of art. Yemen has had more than 2000 days of Guernicas at the hands of the US and Saudis, but no Picasso.

On February 4, 2021, President Biden got a whole lot of good press when he announced that the US would be “stepping up our diplomacy to end the war in Yemen.” Biden also promised that the US would be “ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen.” Biden gave no specific details. The six-year bombing continues. The six-year naval blockade of Yemen continues. The humanitarian crisis continues, with the threat of famine looming. In effect, Biden has participated in war crimes since January 20, with no policy in sight to end the killing.

On March 1, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged that:

The humanitarian crisis taking place in Yemen is the largest and most urgent in the world. Twenty million people, including millions of children, desperately need help. The United States is committed to doing our part, both to provide aid and to help address the obstacles standing in the way of humanitarian access.

That sounds a whole lot better than it is. Blinken did not acknowledge the US role in the air war on Yemen. Blinken did not acknowledge the US role in the naval blockade preventing food and fuel from reaching those 20 million Yemenis. Those obstacles to humanitarian access remain unchanged. The US has the power to remove either one unilaterally, just as it unilaterally chose to impose them. Blinken called on “all parties” to allow unhindered import and distribution of food and fuel, as if the US played no role in blocking both.

Blinken wasn’t done inventing a reality to fit US policy. He pledged support for “the well-being of the Yemeni people” but singled out the Houthis for pressure, even though the Houthis represent a large proportion of the Yemeni people. He called on the Houthis “to cease their cross-border attacks,” even though those attacks are a response to the US/Saudi undeclared war. And then he offered an analysis that would be hilarious if it weren’t so grotesque:

… the Saudis and the Republic of Yemen Government are committed and eager to find a solution to the conflict. We call on the Houthis to match this commitment. A necessary first step is to stop their offensive against Marib, a city where a million internally displaced people live, and to join the Saudis and the government in Yemen in making constructive moves toward peace.

The Saudis are so eager to find a solution to the conflict that they maintain their air war and naval blockade, effectively waging war by starvation – a crime against humanity. The “Republic of Yemen Government” is a fiction and a joke. Yemeni president Mansour Hadi, who is 75, was vice president of Yemen from 1994 to 2011, under the late authoritarian president Ali Abdullah Saleh. When Arab Spring protests erupted against Saleh, he stepped aside in favor of Hadi, who was “elected” president in 2012 with no opposition – a “democratic” result imposed by an international cabal. When you read media referring to his “internationally recognized government,” that’s the fiction they’re hiding. Hadi’s term as president ended in 2014, the international cabal extended it for a year, and that’s pretty much the extent of his legitimacy. That and US/Saudi firepower. By any rational calculation, Hadi is not a legitimate president. He also has no legitimate alternative. No wonder Hadi doesn’t feel safe in Yemen and remains in exile in Riyadh. The population in southern Yemen under the “government’s” control has recently attacked the government palace in Aden in protest against the government’s failure to provide sustenance and stability. A recent bomb attack aimed at a Hadi government minister reflects the reality that southern Yemen has long had a separatist movement quite independent of the Houthis in the north, in effect a second civil war. The most constructive move the Hadi government could make toward peace is to abdicate.

Marib City, the capital of Marib Governorate, is roughly 100 miles northeast of Yemen’s capital in Sanaa. Marib City was established after the 1984 discovery of oil deposits in the region. Covering 6,720 square miles in central Yemen, the Marib Governorate is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Marib contains much of Yemen’s oil, gas, and electric resources. Marib is the last governorate under the control of the Hadi government, but it has been under increasing attack by the Houthis since early 2020. Before that, Marib was relatively remote from the fighting in Yemen, providing refuge for a million or more Yemenis fleeing the fighting elsewhere. Marib City had a population of about 40,000 when the civil war broke out in 2014. Now the city has an estimated 1.5 million people.

The Houthi offensive against Marib has intensified since January 2021. Their offensive has continued in spite of having no air support. For the US Secretary of State to call for the Houthis to stop their offensive is an indication that it’s going their way. By March 8, Houthi forces had breached the northern gates of Marib City. Hadi government forces are supported by the Saudi coalition and local tribes, as well as elements of Al Qaeda and ISIS. (Al Qaeda also fights independently against occupying forces of the United Arab Emirates along the Gulf of Aden coastline.)

Famine has arrived in pockets of Yemen.
Saudi ships blocking fuel aren’t helping.

This was CNN’s headline on March 11, for a story reporting with reasonable accuracy on the very real, years-old humanitarian crisis that the US/Saudi war has brought on the region’s poorest country. CNN quotes a “food insecurity” analysis by the world electronics trade association IPC that predicts that more than 16 million Yemenis (of a total population of about 30 million) are “likely to experience high levels of acute food insecurity” in the first half of 2021. “Out of these, an estimated 11 million people will likely be in Crisis, 5 million in Emergency, and the number of those in Catastrophe will likely increase to 47,000.”

Yemen is an atrocity from almost any perspective. Three US presidents – Obama, Trump, and now Biden – have lied about Yemen while taking the US into an endless nexus of war crimes and crimes against humanity. And for what? To support a Yemeni government that is a fraud? To support a Saudi ally that thought it could win a quick, dirty air war at little or no cost? This abomination, pun intended, never should have happened. So why did it? The formulaic answer in much of the media is usually some variation on this propagandistic patter from Reuters:

A Saudi Arabia-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 after the Iran-allied Houthi group ousted the country’s government from the capital Sanaa.

This essentially false version of reality in Yemen appears in news media across a wide spectrum, from Al Jazeera to ABC News to this version by CNN:

Saudi Arabia has been targeting Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen since 2015, with the support of the US and other Western allies. It had hoped to stem the Houthis’ spread of power and influence in the country by backing the internationally-recognized government under President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi.

The core falsehood in most versions is “the Iran-allied” or “Iran-backed” Houthis. The grain of truth in that characterization is far outweighed by the history on the ground. The Houthis live in Yemen. They are the only combatant force that lives in Yemen, other than elements of the Hadi government and assorted insurrectionists. Yemen is in the midst of a civil war that has flared over decades. The war that is destroying Yemen is waged entirely by outside countries, primarily the US and the Saudi coalition.

The Houthis, who are mostly Shia Muslims, have lived in northwest Yemen for generations and centuries. They fought a civil war against President Saleh and lost. They have long been an oppressed minority in Yemen. When the Hadi government perpetuated the oppression of the Houthis, they rebelled once again. This time, challenging an unpopular and divided government, they were more successful. In 2014 they captured Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, and captured Hadi himself. Then they released him and he fled first to Aden, then to Saudi Arabia, where he is a puppet figurehead.

Before it could become clear what kind of governance the Houthis would provide for their part of Yemen, the US and the Saudi coalition attacked the country. Their publicly stated motivation has always included the imaginary threat from Iran. But the Houthis have a long and independent history that does not rely on Iran for its coherence and force. Iranian support for the Houthis in 2014 was never shown to be significant. The US/Saudi war had had the perverse effect of incentivizing Iranian support for the Houthis, but there’s no evidence that support comes anywhere close to the strength of the US and Saudi coalition forces directed at the Houthis. The US and the Saudi coalition are waging an aggressive war against a country that did none of them any harm. Iran is providing support for an ally unjustly under siege.

The war in Yemen has been brutal on all sides, according to reports by more or less neutral observers. But only the US and the Saudi coalition are invaders, only they are committing international war crimes. The Houthis, as well as all the other sides fighting in Yemen, have also committed war crimes, but on a far lesser scale. Yemeni forces are not the ones waging war by starvation and disease.

Ultimately, the Houthis are the home team, along with other Yemeni factions. The Houthis have nowhere else to go. The only military solution to the Houthis is extermination, genocide, the very course the US and Saudis have been on for years, with the winking hypocrisy of most of the world.

In April 2015, with the Saudis’ saturation bombing already in its third week, the United Nations Security Council unanimously (14-0) passed Resolution 2216, which “Demands End to Yemen Violence.” The Resolution begins with an obscene misrepresentation of reality:

Imposing sanctions on individuals it said were undermining the stability of Yemen, the Security Council today demanded that all parties in the embattled country, in particular the Houthis, immediately and unconditionally end violence and refrain from further unilateral actions that threatened the political transition.

That is the official lie that has publicly defined the war on Yemen since 2015. The UN sees no terror bombing by foreign countries. The UN sees no invasion by foreign troops. The UN sees no terrorist groups in a country that has had little stability for decades. The UN cites only the Houthis for their sins, as if it were somehow the Houthis’ fault that, having no air force and no air defenses, they weren’t getting out of the way of the cluster bombs dropped on their weddings and their funerals.

This article was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2021 at 10:52am and is filed under Disinformation, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Yemen.

We’re also stepping up our diplomacy to end the war in Yemen — a war which has created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe. I’ve asked my Middle East team to ensure our support for the United Nations-led initiative to impose a ceasefire, open humanitarian channels, and restore long-dormant peace talks….

And to underscore our commitment, we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.

– President Biden, foreign policy speech, February 4, 2021

This announcement does not augur peace in Yemen any time soon. Rather it looks a bit like political mystification that some have chosen to celebrate now, regardless of what it actually means, apparently in hope of making it a meaningful, self-fulfilling prophecy some time in the future. This does not seem likely, given what Biden actually said, but we shall see.

For the foreseeable future, Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, will remain the victim of a Saudi war of aggression and Saudi war crimes. Since March 2015, with the full support of the Obama administration, Saudi Arabia and its allies have turned Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, as assessed by the United Nations. Relentless bombing of military and civilian targets alike has led to the deaths of more than 100,000 Yemenis from famine and disease. Millions more need international aid to survive.

One hopeful sign now is the Biden administration’s announcement on February 5 that the US designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization has been rescinded. This was a necessary corrective, not a bold move. The Houthis are ethnic natives in northwest Yemen. Their current territory holds about 70% of Yemen’s 30 million people. They are the victims of Saudi terror bombing.

The Houthis are also the victims of US Iranophobia, the paranoid policy framing that sees Iranian devils behind every difficulty in the Middle East, regardless of any lack of evidence. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo is an Iranophobe, as well as a Christo-fascist. In a midnight news dump on January 10, Pompeo announced the terrorist designation to go into effect on January 19. The announcement provided little basis in policy or fact and received bipartisan criticism because its most likely impact would have been to exacerbate human suffering in Yemen.

While the Biden administration’s decision to rescind the terrorist designation eliminates a factor that would have made the Yemen situation worse, there is little in Biden’s speech that promises to make the situation better any time soon.

Supporting United Nations efforts is probably helpful as far as it goes, but it’s a far cry from US engagement on the peace side to match US engagement on the war side. And to suggest that the UN might “impose a ceasefire” implies a military deployment that is pretty much imaginary. The conflict within Yemen is multi-sided, with few if any clearly-defined frontlines.

The Houthis control most of the northwest, but not all, and that may be the most coherent governmental region in the country. In the south, the official Yemen government, unelected but imposed by international fiat and controlled by Saudi Arabia, shares territory with its own rebel faction controlled by the UAE (United Arab Emirates). The eastern two-thirds of the country, mostly desert, contains islands of control under Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other, smaller factions.

The US was misguided, at best, to sanction the Saudi aggression. The US was criminal to support the Saudi aggression for the past six years. Now Biden has said the US is ending “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen.” There are NO defensive operations in that war, the war is effectively all in Yemen. And when Biden says the US is ending all American support, does that mean no more military guidance from the US mission in Riyadh? No more logistical support? No more intelligence sharing? No more training Saudi pilots? No more target selection? No more mid-air refueling? No more maintenance for Saudi bombers? No more spare parts? Does it mean an end to the US naval blockade, itself an act of war?

The US has been doing all these things, and probably more, with Obama’s and Trump’s blessings since 2015. Will the US stop doing all of them now, or in the near future? Biden didn’t say (the State Department later hedged). Biden promised to end “relevant arms sales,” whatever “relevant” is supposed to mean, since it means nothing on its face. And in the next line of his speech, Biden revealed the calamitous duplicity of the US position all along:

At the same time, Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks, UAV strikes, and other threats from Iranian-supplied forces in multiple countries. We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people.

This is cover-your-butt spinning to excuse future failures planned to appease the Saudi aggressors. Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks and UAV strikes from the Houthis because the Houthis, in the face of relentless attack, have been fighting back.

Biden’s undefined “other threats from Iranian-supplied forces in multiple countries” is murky, non-specific, unverifiable. This makes Biden sound like he’s channeling Pompeo in pure Iranophobe-speak. This fearmongering portends nothing good for Yemen.

Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty is under no discernible threat, except perhaps from within the monarchical police state. So the US is committed to defending an anti-democratic dictatorship that murders its critics in the most brutal fashion? How is that a good thing?

Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity is under no credible threat. Quite literally, Saudi Arabia has NO territorial integrity, since most of its border with eastern Yemen has never been drawn. The Saudis and the Houthis have a territorial dispute in the northwest dating to the 1930s. The Saudis have built more than one wall over the years in an effort to block Yemeni migrants seeking work in Saudi Arabia, which has some ten million migrant workers mostly treated abominably.

Saudi Arabia’s people face a chronic, lethal threat from their own government. There are occasional, minor threats from dissidents. Threats from abroad are likewise all but non-existent. Those missiles and UAV worrying Biden have apparently killed no one; there are no Saudi civilian casualties from the Yemen war, just the 100,000-plus Yemenis.

Biden’s reassurances to Saudi Arabia weren’t just specious, they represent an unchanging rigidity in American thinking that continues as a threat to peace. On Democracy Now, Michigan State University assistant professor Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni scholar and activist, put Biden’s comments in perspective:

So, in his speech, Biden said that he is ending offensive operations in Yemen, but committed —  he went on to commit to defending Saudi borders. Now, this is really concerning to me, because I still remember the statement that the White House put out when Obama initially entered the war in March of 2015, and that was the exact same framing, that they were defending Saudi territory from the Houthis. This is what led us here — six years of war, over 100,000 Yemenis killed, 250,000 people starved to death, if not more, the entire country destroyed. And the framing was always to protect Saudi borders.

In reality, in 2015, the Houthis were nowhere near the Saudi border, they were deep in southern Yemen, on the verge of overrunning Aden and driving out the Yemeni puppet government controlled by Saudi Arabia. That was when the Saudis launched their undeclared war; that was when the US supported the unrestricted aerial bombardment of a country with no air defense.

And beneath all the other arguments was the widespread fear of Iran, Iranophobia, based on little to no evidence. Iran is a despised Shia Muslim state in a Sunni Muslim world, and the mutual distrust is deep-seated and irrational, except that the Iranians remember that the western allies of Saudi Arabia imposed one of the world’s bloodier dictatorships on Iran. The Iranians weren’t ever very grateful, so how could the US trust them after that: obviously, if Iran had an interest in supporting the Houthis in resisting a puppet government controlled by the Saudi dictatorship, the US had a reason to intervene against the defenders of freedom. Or as Reuters reported in 2015:

The United States is speeding up arms supplies and bolstering intelligence sharing with a Saudi-led alliance bombing a militia aligned with Iran in neighboring Yemen, a senior U.S. diplomat said on Tuesday….

“Saudi Arabia is sending a strong message to the Houthis and their allies that they cannot overrun Yemen by force,” he told reporters in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

“As part of that effort, we have expedited weapons deliveries, we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we have established a joint coordination planning cell in the Saudi operation center….”

That US diplomat in 2015 was US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, now President Biden’s new Secretary of State. He was an architect of a criminal war rooted in a largely irrational fear of Iran, along with cynical fealty to Saudi Arabia. Since 1979, US relations with Iran have been poisoned by Iranians taking American diplomats hostage, then manipulating those hostages to push Americans to elect President Reagan. There’s plenty to regret on both sides. But on February 5, Secretary Blinken started a new round of talks with American allies aimed at shaping a new relationship with Iran. The trick will be to treat Iran as a rational adversary, and even more so to persuade Iran that the US can be rational, too. The Yemen initiatives are steps in a positive direction, but only baby steps.

This article was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2021 at 6:05am and is filed under Joe Biden, Saudi Arabia, United Nations, War Crimes.