The leader of the Ansarallah resistance movement, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, stated during a televised speech on 8 May that Yemen will continue supporting Palestine against Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign.
“Our country has resumed its full stance – militarily, officially, and popularly – to support the Palestinian people since the resumption of the genocide,” Houthi said, emphasizing that the Yemeni position is “firm and comprehensive regarding support, whether through bombing deep inside occupied Palestine or the ban on Israeli ships.”
The US has reached a ceasefire deal with the Houthis in Yemen, ahead of a visit to Gulf dictatorships next week. It seems the Houthis’ resilience cost Washington too much money for too little gain. So the imperial power will now rely on its localenforcer Israel to continue the fight, which the apartheid state began itself with its genocide in Gaza.
Trump steps back in Yemen, but Israel steps forward
The Donald Trump administration in the US is incredibly pro-Israel. But despite Washington essentially propping up the apartheid state and its crimes against humanity, it remains the shot-caller. And because the economic bottom line matters to Trump, especially at a time when he’s scored so many owngoalsinternationally, the costly and largely ineffective bombing of Yemen had to stop. So he apparently surprised Israel by signing the deal with the Houthis, though the settler-colonial power was already doubtful about US commitment to its campaign in Yemen.
The Houthis have been resisting Israel’s genocide in Gaza by targeting ships heading to the apartheid state. And the US and UK have been coming to Israel’s aid, but with little success and much criticism.
When a Houthi missile managed to evade interception and hit near Ben Gurion International Airport on 4 May, it was the “most significant strike” so far for the group. And it was therefore pretty clear that the efforts of Israel and its Western allies to dampen the Houthis’ will to resist weren’t working. So the following day, Israel sent around 30 warplanes to Yemen to bomb the important port of Hodeidah. Then, just hours before the US-Houthi ceasefire announcement, other Israeli planes hit Sanaa airport in Yemen. They caused “around $500 million in losses” and left it “in ruins“.
The US failed. But Israel and Houthis will continue to fight.
Trump standing down in Yemen marks a US failure to stop Houthi resistance. He simply realised it was more cost-effective and less embarrassing to let Israel fight its own battle.
The US-Houthi ceasefire reportedly doesn’t say anything about Houthis’ fight against Israel’s war-criminal regime. Chief Houthi negotiator Mohammed Abdulsalam said there was no mention in the deal about ceasing resistance to Israel’s genocide in “any way, shape or form”. Far from that, the Houthis have clarified that this struggle “will continue”.
US President Donald Trump announced on 6 May that Washington will put a stop to its illegal war against Yemen, claiming that the Ansarallah-led Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) “don’t want to fight anymore.”
When pressed by reporters on the terms of the agreement with Sanaa, Trump claimed Yemeni officials “said please don’t bomb us anymore.” Asked where he got that information, Trump said, “It doesn’t matter where I heard it – a very good source.”
Nevertheless, the Omani Foreign Ministry announced later that Muscat successfully brokered a ceasefire agreement between Washington and Sanaa that will see both sides end hostilities.
Israeli strikes carried out on the evening of 5 May on Yemen’s Hodeidah port and surrounding areas, including a concrete factory near Bajil, injured 56 people and killed one, while damaging 70 percent of the port’s five docks and infrastructure, Yemeni sources reported.
At least 21 people were injured in the Bajil strike, while the Yemeni Health Ministry later said 35 people were injured and one person killed in the broader Hodeidah attacks. Civilian areas such as Al-Salakhanah and Al-Hawak neighborhoods were also reportedly hit.
Nasruddin Amer, head of Ansarallah’s media office, vowed that the group would respond to the Israeli attack and that the strikes would not deter further operations.
In an abrupt announcement on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said that the U.S. is stopping its bombings in Yemen “effective immediately” after reaching an agreement with Houthi leaders on Monday night. “We had some very good news last night,” Trump said, during a meeting with Canada’s prime minister. “The Houthis have announced that they are not — or, they’ve announced to us, at least…
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on 2 May ordered the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier to remain in West Asia for another week, marking the second time its deployment has been extended amid ongoing military operations against Yemen.
The move maintains the presence of two US aircraft carrier strike groups in the region—an uncommon occurrence in recent years—underscoring Washington’s commitment to end Yemeni attacks on Israeli-linked ships transiting the Red Sea.
The Ansarallah-led Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) began attacking Israeli-linked ships starting in November 2023 in response to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The Yemeni movement Ansarallah declared on Sunday the launch of a comprehensive aerial blockade on Israel in response to the Israeli government’s decision to expand its military operations in Gaza.
Ansarallah military spokesperson announced on Sunday that Yemen would focus on targeting Israeli airports—chiefly Ben Gurion Airport—as part of its response strategy.
“In response to the Israeli escalation with the decision to expand aggressive operations on Gaza,” the spokesperson said, “the Yemeni Armed Forces announce that they will work to impose a comprehensive air blockade on the Israeli enemy by repeatedly targeting airports, most notably Lod Airport, known in Israel as Ben Gurion Airport.”
On Wednesday night, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth threatened Iran over Tehran’s alleged support for the Houthis amid the US’s heavy Yemen bombing campaign.
“Message to IRAN: We see your LETHAL support to The Houthis. We know exactly what you are doing,” Hegseth wrote on X.
“You know very well what the US Military is capable of — and you were warned. You will pay the CONSEQUENCE at the time and place of our choosing,” he added.
While the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, are aligned with Iran, the Yemeni group has its own domestic missile and drone program, meaning they’re not reliant on Tehran for military support. This has been acknowledged by US officials, including President Trump.
The Yemeni government issued a statement on 30 April warning the UK against its continued participation in the US campaign of deadly airstrikes against Yemen that began last month.
“In a display of typical British arrogance, the UK Ministry of Defense announced participation in a joint military operation with the US enemy against our country, targeting areas south of Sanaa … The Government affirms that the British enemy must carefully consider the consequences of its involvement and be prepared to face the repercussions,” the Sanaa government said.
The Yemeni government issued a statement on 30 April warning the UK against its continued participation in the US campaign of deadly airstrikes against Yemen that began last month.
“In a display of typical British arrogance, the UK Ministry of Defense announced participation in a joint military operation with the US enemy against our country, targeting areas south of Sanaa … The Government affirms that the British enemy must carefully consider the consequences of its involvement and be prepared to face the repercussions,” the Sanaa government said.
Around 100 officers from the UAE-backed National Resistance Forces (NRF) in Yemen have defected to join Ansar Allah, delivering a major blow to U.S. and Gulf-backed efforts inside the country. The development comes amid threats of a U.S.-supported ground offensive and intensified American airstrikes against civilian targets.
On Sunday, approximately 100 officers from Yemen’s United Arab Emirates-backed forces defected to Ansar Allah in the capital, Sanaa. Although the defectors’ identities have not been publicly disclosed, initial reports suggest that much of the group’s high command was among them.
The Trump administration says it will not be disclosing details on its war in Yemen as Democrats are pressing officials to answer to concerns over civilian harm and reports find that the U.S. has killed hundreds of civilians in just over six weeks of strikes. On Sunday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that the military had struck 800 targets in Yemen since March 15…
The geopolitical dynamics of the Horn of Africa region are always volatile, but more so now than ever. The world’s attention is most drawn to the region by Ansar Allah’s disruption of crucial maritime routes in the Red Sea in support of Palestine and Donald Trump’s despicable proposal to remove and dump the entire population of Gaza in war-torn Sudan, Somalia, and/or Somaliland, the unrecognized Somali secessionist state.
Both the US and Israel have considered recognizing secessionist Somaliland as a state in order to turn it into a US/Israeli military enclave on the Gulf of Aden, near the mouth of the Red Sea and just across from Houthi-controlled Yemen.
A trio of Democratic senators on Thursday demanded answers from embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth regarding U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, which have reportedly killed scores of civilians including numerous women and children since last month. “We write to you concerning reports that U.S. strikes against the Houthis at the Ras Isa fuel terminal in Yemen last week killed dozens of civilians…
President Donald Trump’s new Yemen campaign is driving what experts call a spiraling humanitarian disaster, nearly doubling the previous administration’s costs while slashing aid and intensifying airstrikes.
Under pressure from powerful Washington think tanks, Trump has sharply increased airstrikes, cut $107 million in aid, and designated Yemen’s Ansar Allah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO )—all steps that experts and aid groups say are deepening famine, displacement, and collective punishment.
The latest moves target Ansar Allah-controlled northern Yemen, home to roughly 70% of the population and 80% dependent on food imports.
Janine Jackson interviewed the Institute for Policy Studies’ Khury Petersen-Smith about Yemen distortions for the April 18, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: You could say that US news media focus on this country’s lethal military assault in Yemen was distorted by the revelation that operational planning was fecklessly shared with a journalist in a Signal group chat. Though the sadder truth might be that, without that palace intrigue, US media would’ve shown even less interest in the US visiting what Trump brags of as “overwhelming lethal force” on the poorest country in the Arab world.
Most of what we’re getting are things like the April 9 parenthetical on PBS NewsHour, that the White House has reinstated emergency food aid to some impoverished countries, but “cuts will remain for war-ravaged Afghanistan and Yemen.” Yemen is presented as almost just a chess piece, a pawn in US designs in the Middle East, rather than a real place where real women, men and children live and die.
Khury Petersen-Smith I’m so grateful to be here. Thank you.
JJ: What people may have specifically heard is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying:
It’s been a devastating campaign, whether it’s underground facilities, weapons manufacturing, bunkers, troops in the open, air defense assets. We are not going to relent, and it’s only going to get more unrelenting until the Houthis declare they will stop shooting at our ships.
Some military analysts and former American commanders said that a more aggressive campaign against the Houthis, particularly against Houthi leadership, was necessary to degrade the group’s ability to threaten international shipping.
What context, information, history—what is missing from that snapshot that might help folks better understand what’s happening right now?
KPS: Often, I want to take a big step back and go into history, even recent history, but actually, this time, let’s start with the immediate, and that statement from Hegseth. Because Hegseth is, I think, known for brash hyperbole and these wild statements. But in that statement, he was actually speaking with some precision when he said, We’re going to do this. We’re going to maintain this lethal policy until the Houthis declare that they will stop firing at US ships.
And the reason that “declare” is an important word there is because the Houthis actually had stopped firing at US ships. When Israel entered its ceasefire agreement with Hamas, the agreement that Israel then broke, and we are now—not “we” in the US, but people in Gaza—really dealing with the reality of another broken ceasefire, as Israel really tightens its grip on the Gaza Strip, but when Israel and Hamas entered that ceasefire agreement, not only did Hamas honor it, but the Houthis actually honored it in Yemen.
So the immediate context for this latest round of vicious US bombing is that, actually, the Houthis were not firing at US ships. The Houthis had stopped their attacks. And it was the United States, really, that started the combat again, followed then by Israel, which then violated the ceasefire. So that’s a really important context, because it’s not the case that this US bombing came in response to an attack by the Houthis on US ships. Actually, the Houthis had agreed to stop fighting, and the US refused to take yes for an answer.
JJ: Right. Maybe, for some folks, what is the nature of the Houthis embargo? What was the purpose of that? When did that start?
KPS: Sure, and we can get into where the Houthis as a political force came from, but if we just go to the more recent history, in October 2023, the Houthis, which are effectively running much of Yemen, they framed their attacks on Israeli forces, on Israel and on global shipping through the Red Sea, in the context of solidarity with Palestinians, and as a response to the Israeli assault on Gaza.
Yemen is on the Arabian Peninsula. It is adjacent to the Red Sea, and that maritime corridor is extremely important for global trade.
And so the Houthis were basically taking advantage of that position, of that location, and saying, Until Israel stops its bombardment of Gaza, global shipping will be affected by our armed attacks—and Israel can also expect military intervention on behalf of the Houthis. So that’s really some other context for where this has come from. And it should be noted that, in the same way that the Houthis honored the latest ceasefire, the previous ceasefire that Israel and Hamas entered in the fall of 2023, November 2023, was also honored by the Houthis—and by Hezbollah, by the way. So these forces, these regional forces outside of Palestine that have framed their armed actions as a response to the Israeli attack, they have honored the agreements that Israel has entered with the Palestinians when that has happened.
JJ: That’s important to keep in mind, because Houthis and Hezbollah, and Hamas, are kind of tossed off in media as basically being a synonym for “terrorist.” You’re never offered any explanation, really, or rarely, of their role—with Houthis, in particular, their role within Yemen. It’s just as though these are kind of ragtag violent men.
KPS: In many ways, that kind of description or that characterization of these different forces throughout the Middle East is an extension of the way that Israel and the United States portray Palestinians–that any Palestinian actions against Israel or against Israeli forces are devoid of context of the Israeli occupation, and that it’s driven by some kind of irrational hatred of Israel.
The other thing, in tandem with this notion of an ahistorical, decontextualized anti-Israel violence, is the notion that these are all proxies of Iran, that Iran is the puppet master in the shadows that’s pulling the strings of Palestinian forces like Hamas, as well as Hezbollah and the Houthis. And not only is that part of a campaign to demonize and really legitimize violence against Iran and throughout the region, but it also ignores the fact that these countries, of course, have their own national dynamics, and these forces have their own interests. Even if they have some alignment with Iran, they have their own interests.
And so it’s worth noting that the cause of the Palestinian freedom struggle is very popular in Yemen. This is a country that has been divided by civil war. There’s divisions in Yemen, but one of the things that really unites the Yemeni population is the support for Palestinians. And so that’s another important piece of context when we think about why the Houthis have acted the way they have, and have framed their actions in terms of the Palestinian struggle.
JJ: I think I’m going to bring us back to Iran in a second, but I just wanted to say, a number of groups recently have stated the reality that US airstrikes across Yemen since mid-March are unconstitutional acts of war that lack congressional authorization. Hegseth is out there saying, We tracked this guy and he went into his girlfriend’s building and then we collapsed it. Well, as Paul Hedreen wrote for FAIR.org, that’s a war crime. Why does it seem quaint, or beside the point, to note that the US is not officially at war with Yemen, that killing civilians, as the US has done and is doing, these are crimes, yes?
KPS: Yes. There’s so many violations that are happening, but let’s start with the first one. It’s not only violations of international law that the US is committing by targeting civilian infrastructure, which it is doing in Yemen, it’s a violation of US law for the US to be effectively waging war against a country that it has not declared war against.
And to answer your question about, there’s something that’s maybe strange about just pointing that out, I think that we have to look at at least the past 25 or so years, the so-called “War on Terror.”
From the start, US forces have been operating in Yemen. The US special forces have been operating there. The US has carried out cruise missile strikes in the early days of the “War on Terror.” And that has continued during the Yemeni civil war, which really involved a massive intervention, and, frankly, its own kind of war, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, their bombardment of Yemen, which began in 2015.
This was devastating. And the United States played such an essential role in supplying the airplanes, the bombs that those planes are dropping, but also intelligence. They did everything except drop the bomb themselves when Saudi Arabia was doing it. They supplied the targets, they supplied the planes, they supplied the bombs, to the extent that at that time in Congress, there was finally a real debate, where people like Ro Khanna and others said, Wait a minute. The US is effectively waging war here. Congress has not actually made a declaration of war. This is a violation of US law that President Trump, the first time, was carrying out.
And so I think that all that context is really important, including, by the way, the bombing that President Biden did last year of Yemen. For many years, Yemen has been a place that the US has seen fit to bomb and otherwise do violence against, with very little public discussion in this country.
JJ: As your colleague Phyllis Bennis wrote, the US bombing of Yemen is always referred to in the media as bombing the “Iran-backed Houthi rebels” to avoid acknowledging that, like in Gaza, the bombs are dropping on civilian infrastructure and civilians already facing devastating hunger.
I also think that carefully chosen phrasing, “Iran-backed Houthi rebels,” it sounds like it’s greasing the gears for a wider war.
KPS: I think that’s absolutely right. The first thing to say, of course, is that these bombs have a devastating impact on civilian life, on the people of Yemen. There’s this US and Israeli notion that through so-called “targeted strikes,” and what they call “precision munitions” or whatever, that they’re just targeting who they call the “bad guys.” And again, still illegal even if you’re….
JJ: Yeah. And then anyone else is a human shield.
KPS: Right? Exactly. Even if the US was only targeting and hurting and killing combatants, it would still be illegal, according to US law.
But for what it’s worth, that’s simply not the case. Civilians have suffered tremendously over these, again, more than two decades of various operations that the United States has supported. It’s been catastrophic.
Khury Petersen-Smith: “There’s suffering on a mass scale in Yemen, and the United States bears tremendous responsibility for that.”
And it’s just worth repeating that the humanitarian situation in Yemen, the destruction of Yemen’s infrastructure, the destruction of their sanitation facilities, the massive food insecurity that was caused, in particular, by the Saudi campaign of bombing—this was declared by the United Nations to be the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Subsequently, unfortunately—devastatingly—that crisis has been, on the global stage, eclipsed by the catastrophe in Gaza. But there’s suffering on a mass scale in Yemen, and the United States bears tremendous responsibility for that. So that’s the first thing that it’s important to say.
But, again, the notion that there’s some evil Iranian puppet master pulling the strings ignores Yemen’s own history and politics. And I think that you’re absolutely right: it’s about setting up an escalation of US and Israeli violence that is targeting Iran, which, essentially, the US is preparing for. They’ve moved more ships and more personnel into the Middle East. They’re very open about threatening Iran. When they started this latest round of bombing of Yemen, the Defense spokesperson said that “we are putting Iran on notice.” So it’s a pretty thinly veiled threat toward Iran, and I think that we should take it very seriously. I think that for many in the United States, it might be unimaginable for the US to have an open war with Iran, but I think that we are going to have to take these threats very seriously, and work to prevent it.
JJ: Let me just end on that note: What are the places for intervention? I am always sorry to sort of end with “call your congressperson,” but what are the levers that we have to work with, to prevent this slow-motion nightmare that we’re looking at? And then, also, what would you like to see journalists do?
KPS: I think that it is important for people to put pressure on US officials. And of course that includes members of Congress, where, unfortunately, there’s quite a large degree of unity in Congress about attacking Iran. And that’s been true for a long time.
In fact, the last time Trump was in office, there were members of Congress who were saying that Trump wasn’t going hard enough on Iran. This was during the era of so-called “maximum pressure.”
So just challenging that consensus is extremely important. We should keep in mind that, in the early days of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, members of Congress could say what they have always said, which is: You may not like this Israeli operation, but A) Israel has this so-called “right to defend itself,” and B) this is what the American people want. And then they no longer were able to say that, because they were flooded with calls and demonstrations and so many messages saying that the majority of Americans actually opposed this. And that only grew as the situation went on.
And that kind of cleavage between US elected officials and the US population is important. It lays the basis for actually changing that policy. So getting that ball rolling around Iran, before things escalate, is extremely important.
JJ: I appreciate that.
What I have seen that is critical and probing on this has been independent reporting. And I guess that might be the place, obviously, to continue to look. But what would you like journalists to be especially looking out for, or especially trying to avoid?
KPS: If I could say one thing to journalists who are doing their work right now, I would encourage them to please consider Iran and Yemen countries just like any other country. And countries that, when the people of these countries speak, know that there’s a diversity of opinions, as exists in every single society. And when the government speaks, they should take it seriously enough to evaluate it critically. And that’s true of any government.
And, frankly, one of the things that I’m struck by, this persistent reality in US journalism, is that countries like Israel and United States, particularly when they speak on international questions, and particularly when we talk about Iran or Palestine or Yemen, US journalists afford this credibility to the US and Israel that they deny to Palestinians and Yemenis and Iran.
When Israel bombs Gaza, and we hear the reports of how many people were killed, it’s still the case that American journalists use the Israeli language of saying “according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry,” as though US government agencies are identified with whatever political party happens to be in power at the moment. That’s simply not true.
The question is, why is there this kind of skepticism or cynicism, this notion that, well, this might not be a credible source, the government in Palestine, but the notion that the Israeli government or the US government, which have been shown to lie so many times—I mean, Pete Hegseth about this very episode, that our conversation is about, this scandal about sharing these plans on Signal, he lied directly to reporters.
And so I really hope that instead of affording him whatever credibility US journalists have afforded government officials, which I have thoughts about that as well, certainly now, when one has lied directly to you, the media, I hope that you treat his statements with the appropriate amount of interrogation. And then take seriously the perspectives that are coming out of Yemen and Iran, which are interesting and should be evaluated with the same tools of journalism that you extend elsewhere.
JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with Khury Petersen-Smith of the Institute for Policy Studies. You can find their work online at IPS-DC.org. Thank you so much, Khury Petersen-Smith, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
On April 17, US airstrikes on Yemen killed 74 people and injured 171 in a dangerous escalation of US President Donald Trump’s war against the poorest country in the Middle East. A resident of the area around Yemen’s Ras Issa fuel port told Chinese media that “among the victims were employees, truck drivers, contracted workers, and civilian trainees of the port,” and “rescue teams recovering bodies and extinguishing fires were also targeted in [US] subsequent strikes.”
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.
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.
In 2024, while all eyes were on Gaza, President Joe Biden launched a bombing campaign in Yemen that displaced more than 531,000 people. Nearly 40,000 were driven from their homes by U.S. bombs alone.
It was called Operation Prosperity Guardian, and you probably never heard of it.
There was no congressional vote. No White House press conference. And yet by the end of the year, U.S. warplanes had hit schools, mosques, farms, ports, and fuel trucks across Yemen, causing a humanitarian collapse that rivaled the worst years of the Saudi-led war.
Two reports issued by Yemen’s National Team for Foreign Outreach (NTFG), reviewed by MintPress News, have revealed staggering statistics about the impacts of Biden’s final military campaign against the war-torn Arab nation.
This week on CounterSpin: CBS News on April 14 said:
We’re following new violence in the Middle East. Israeli strikes hit a major hospital in northern Gaza. At least 21 people were reportedly killed. The emergency room is badly damaged. Israel accused Hamas of using the hospital to hide its fighters.
Meanwhile, Houthi militants in Yemen said they fired two ballistic missiles at Israel. The Israeli military initially said two missiles were launched and one was intercepted, but later said only one missile had been fired.
There’s information in there, if you can parse it; but the takeaway for most will be that framing: “violence in the Middle East,” which suggests that whatever happened today is just the latest round in a perennial battle between warring parties, where you and I have no role except that of sad bystander.
When it comes to Yemen, elite media’s repeated reference to “Iran-backed Houthi rebels” not only obscures the current fighting’s political origins and recent timeline, it erases the Yemeni people, who are paying the price both for the fighting and for the distortions around it, from political elites and their media amplifiers.
We get some grounding from Khury Petersen-Smith; he’s the Michael Ratner Middle East fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Plus Janine Jackson takes a look back at some recent press coverage of fossil fuel companies and climate change.
The U.S. has killed over 100 people in Yemen in less than a month of bombardments, Yemen health officials say, killing dozens of civilians as the Trump administration escalates its attacks on the region. The Yemen Health Ministry reported on Monday that U.S. airstrikes have killed at least 123 people in Yemen since March 16, and wounded at least 247 others. This includes a strike on a…
In repeatedly targeting and destroying a cancer center in Yemen, the United States has carried on a long pattern of bombing hospitals.
On March 24, the United States carried out a premeditated attack on the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Hospital in Saada, Yemen, turning it into rubble. At least two people were killed and 13 more injured.
This was not an isolated incident. Eight days previously, on March 16, Washington launched 13 separate airstrikes against the building, systematically destroying the hospital’s five blocks.
The Anti-Cancer Fund, a local government medical organization, described the events as a clear “war crime.”
The US signaled on 7 April that it is planning to step up its violent campaign of airstrikes on Yemen, which have killed dozens since last month, including women and children.
“It’s been a bad three weeks for the Houthis, and it’s about to get worse,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday in the Oval Office, while seated near US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It’s been a devastating campaign, whether it’s underground facilities, weapons manufacturing, bunkers, troops in the open-air defense assets – we are not going to relent, and it’s only to get more unrelenting until the Houthis declare they will stop shooting at our ships,” Hegseth added.
The strike on Yemen that was celebrated by Trump administration officials in a now-infamous leaked Signal chat killed a newborn baby and charred and killed a 5-year-old boy, according to new witness testimony of the strike. In a New Yorker interview published on Tuesday with a man who survived the strike, identified by the pseudonym Hassan, the man said that he and his neighbors rushed to the…
The US military has used $200 million in munitions since it restarted its campaign against Yemen over two weeks ago – the success of which has been “limited,” according to a 4 April report by the New York Times (NYT).
The report comes as US President Donald Trump has been boasting about the success of Washington’s campaign against the Ansarallah resistance movement, which he says has been “decimated.”
“In closed briefings in recent days, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that there has been only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers,” anonymous congressional aides and officials told NYT.
Britain’s crony government may only be a junior partner to US imperialism nowadays, but its participation in mass murder and destruction in Gaza and Yemen show once and for all that British imperial crimes didn’t stop in the 20th century. And it’s not about ‘keeping people safe’ in the UK. In fact, there are many reasons to believe Britain’s out-of-control military-government love-in actually makes us less safe.
Much of our focus is rightly on the UK government’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal assault on occupied Gaza since 2023, but there is also a long history of British tyranny in Yemen. And this has come into focus yet again with Britain’s involvement in the escalating bombing of anti-genocide forces there in recent weeks.
There are a number of important groups and individuals that are fighting to expose the immense, corrupting power that the arms trade has over Britain’s political system, and how people around the world – including in the UK – suffer as a result. Below is some vital context – both new and old – to inform us as we fight back.
UK was key in Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has just released its “Trends in UK arms exports in 2023” report. And it reminded us that, “despite overwhelming evidence of war crimes”, the British government allowed the UK arms industry to remain “central to the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen” that devastated the country from 2015 to 2022 (when a truce took hold). Britain ignored “the clear risks to civilian life and international law” in Yemen, paving the way for it to do the same with Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza from 2023 onwards. But perhaps even more than with the Gaza genocide, “the UK bears significant responsibility for the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen”.
The revolving door between arms companies and government enabled Yemen’s decimation
BAE Systems – the “biggest UK arms company” – has no interest in human rights, as we can see from its heavy involvement with authoritarian regimes. It’s been very close to Saudi Arabia since the 1980s, for example, and it enabled the Saudi decimation of Yemen from 2015 onwards. Its “close ties with the UK government” helped to ensure there was no accountability, though. As CAAT pointed out, many BAE exports “take place under open licences, making them nearly impossible to scrutinise”. This is the case with “as much as half of the UK’s arms exports” (including those of key parts for Israel’s F-35 jets of destruction).
BAE, in short, “profits from war and repression, often with the tacit or explicit support of UK government policy”. And that’s no wonder, considering:
BAE personnel have been seconded into government departments, while former officials move easily into BAE and other defence firms — blurring the lines between public interest and corporate profit.
CAAT insisted that:
The revolving door between government and arms companies undermines efforts to apply ethical standards in arms exports.
It’s perhaps no surprise to hear, then, that:
The UK signed £14.5 billion of arms export contracts in 2023 alone — the second-highest annual total on record.
Unredacted has added to the focus on Yemen recently with the release of a project that:
brings together a large collection of documents relating to US-UK military and political involvement in the Yemen war, primarily through its support for the Saudi-led coalition.
It explains that:
Many of these documents shed light on the impact of the war on Yemeni civilians, UK military training of the Royal Saudi Air Force, the history of UK military relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the legal challenge by Campaign Against Arms Trade in relation to UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia, and decision-making within government about the implementation of UK arms export rules.
To accompany this, Middle East Eyepublished an article highlighting Britain’s response to the ‘Great Hall Massacre’ in Yemen, which caused the US to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. UK officials ignored the warnings and kept arms flowing – as a foreign office whistleblower had previously exposed. The UK government then tried to prevent journalists and academics from getting their hands on information about what happened. The understaffing and ineffectiveness of the parliamentary committee responsible for arms export oversight (CAEC), meanwhile, didn’t help matters.
Politicians’ behaviour regarding the Saudi destruction of Yemen, and their ability to get away with it, then paved the way for the same to happen with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Again, the government officials ignored warnings and kept arms flowing, with the help of political pressure, bureaucratic evasion, and legal manipulation. They did this in full disrespect of arms export laws and human rights, and in full submission to corporate and imperial interests.
The current bombing of Yemen on behalf of Israel’s genocide
These efforts to highlight the destructive impact of the toxic alliance of arms companies and corrupt politicians are all the more important considering Britain’s ongoing support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and for US attacks on Yemen to try and stop its solidarity with Gaza. They also remind us of the long history of British crimes in Yemen.
Britain occupied part of Yemen in 1839, using it as a colonial stopover on the way to and from India. The port city of Aden even “became the main British base for her Far and Middle East interests… after the loss of the Suez Canal” In 1956. But as the struggle for freedom advanced in the 1960s, Britain used “increasingly ruthless repressive measures” to try and suppress local resistance. The “harsh and often indiscriminate” repression failed, though, and British forces left in 1967.
In the 60s, Britain backed “shifty, unreliable and treacherous” forces in Yemen and used violent, covert tactics to impede development and protect its colonial occupation. “As many as 200,000” people may have died during this period.
Then, a turbulent post-colonial period of dictatorships kept many Yemeni people in poverty. A useless, corrupt dictator who opportunistically served US interests faced a revolution in 2011, and then Saudi Arabia’s brutal and pointless bombing campaign only worsened the situation for ordinary people.
Britain is “well aware of the complexities of Yemeni resistance”, as Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) has pointed out. Yet it “now risks repeating the mistakes of the past”.
IT’S. ALL. ABOUT. THE. MONEY.
Why would Britain increase its involvement in what the mainstream media oncecalled “the next Afghanistan”? Why would it enter a quagmire that does not serve the interests of ordinary people in the UK? As AOAV said:
Britain’s deep entanglement in the security industry… reflects a dangerous fusion of state interests with private defence profits.
The country’s “deep economic and strategic ties with the Gulf“ dictatorships, meanwhile, also play a key role. British corporations want profit – and oil and arms are great ways to make money for unscrupulous, unethical actors.
However, AOAV insisted:
by launching airstrikes and closely aligning itself with the US and Israel, the UK risks reinforcing the very instability it claims to oppose.
Why? Because involvement in Yemen:
entrenches [Britain] deeper in a widening regional conflict—one that strengthens narratives of Western aggression and increases the likelihood of further retaliation.
If the money keeps flowing, though, the corporate-government alliance is happy.
The fightback against politicians’ destructive lies
Feinstein and his colleagues have been raising funds to publish a book that opposes the:
unholy alliance of money, power, and violence [that] has been trying to convince the world that every war is the last war for peace, every civilian death is necessary collateral in the pursuit of human rights, and every weapon sold is bought to make us safe.
They seek to show how:
the ongoing slaughter in Gaza and Yemen have exposed this rhetoric as lies.
Feinstein has previously called the arms racket “the world’s most corrupt trade”, saying “it accounts for around 40% of all corruption in all global trade”. And this is because of “a veil of national-security-imposed secrecy” which allows:
politicians, corporate executives, military leaders, intelligence leaders [to] do things on arms deals that they wouldn’t do in any other sector because they just wouldn’t get away with it.
As a result of bribery and impunity, the war machine keeps on raking in money at the expense of humanity, systemically undermining so-called democracies like the UK in the process.
Fortunately, groups and individuals like CAAT, Unredacted, AOAV, and Feinstein are helping to expose the war machine’s powerful grip on British politics, and the way people in Yemen, Gaza, Britain, and elsewhere suffer as a result. Because by truly understanding this situation, we can unite to fight back.
The U.S. is bombing Yemen because Yemen is acting, as required by international law, to stop the genocide and unlawful siege in Palestine.
This is not an editorial opinion. It is a statement of both law and fact.
Neither of these facts has been featured in the reporting or commentary of Western media corporations, let alone in the statements of perpetrator governments like the U.S.
Because to perpetrate a genocide in plain sight requires the suppression of the truth and the obscuring of the law.
The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg (3/24/25) complained “the group was transmitting information to someone not authorized to receive it”—an odd criticism for a journalist to make about government officials.
The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, are the de facto government in northwest Yemen. The group began as a religious movement among the Zaydis, an idiosyncratic branch of Shia Islam, before taking a political-military turn in the 2000s. Since 2014, Ansar Allah has been a powerful faction in the country’s civil war, fighting against the Republic of Yemen, the weak but Saudi-backed internationally recognized government. With the war on hold since a 2022 ceasefire agreement, the Houthis now control the capital city of Sanaa, and govern the majority of Yemen’s population.
Beginning on March 15, the US military began an operation that has killed dozens in Yemen and injured over a hundred, including women and children, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth frankly acknowledged the leveling of a civilian building.
US planning for the operation was revealed in articles by the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg (3/24/25, 3/26/25), which disclosed that the journalist had been inadvertently added to a Signal group chat that top administration officials were using to discuss bombing plans—an inclusion that was not noticed by any of the intended participants. This prompted a furor in establishment papers like the New York Times and Washington Post, centering on the Trump administration’s use of an insecure messaging app to discuss classified matters.
While leading newspapers were not wrong to skewer the Trump administration for the use of a commercial messaging app to communicate confidential information—which, it should be remembered, allows officials to illegally destroy records of their deliberations (New York Times, 3/27/25)—the focus on Washington palace intrigue over the bombing of women and children is a stark reminder of corporate media priorities.
‘It’s now collapsed’
The part of the Trump administration group chat where they discuss the actual bombing needed no comment, according to the New York Times (3/26/25).
Since news of the Signal leak broke, the Times has published at least three dozen stories and opinion pieces focusing on the scandal. One of those many pieces was an annotated transcript of the Signal chat (3/25/25). Most messages in the chat featured explanatory notes from journalists, some messages with multiple notes. One message from national security adviser Michael Waltz the Times chose not to annotate: “The first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
The “collapsed” building in question was bombed by the United States, killing at least 13 civilians, according to the Yemen Data Project. This is a war crime. While alternative media outlets have been quick to call these strikes out for what they are (e.g., Drop Site, 3/16/25; Truthout, 3/26/25; Democracy Now!, 3/26/25), the Times and the Washington Post chose not to go into questions of international law.
Amidst the dozens of stories on the Signal scandal, the Times published five stories focused on the strikes (3/15/25, 3/16/25, 3/19/25, 3/26/25, 3/27/25). None of these stories entertain the possibility of US strikes violating international law. Only one story (3/16/25) made mention of the phrase “war crime,” which was in a final paragraph quote from Hezbollah, with the group described by the Times as “another armed proxy for Iran in the region.”
The only mentions of children or “civilian” casualties were moderated by innuendo. The unfair convention of citing the “Hamas-run” health ministry—a formulation that deliberately downplays the death and destruction caused by US weaponry—has extended to Yemen, with both the Times (3/16/25, 3/19/25) and the Post (3/15/25) citing the “Houthi-run Health Ministry in Yemen” for casualty figures.
‘No credible reports’
The Washington Post‘s Missy Ryan (3/17/25) doesn’t question the Pentagon’s claim that there were “no credible reports of civilian deaths” after the attack on Yemen.
The Washington Post seemed similarly unable to bring international law into their reporting. The furthest the Post (3/15/25) was willing to go was relaying that the Houthis “claimed the strikes targeted residential areas and targeted civilians.” In the Post’s March 17 story on the US offensive, the only mention of civilian deaths was US Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich’s claim that “despite Houthi assertions, there had been no credible reports of civilian deaths in the ongoing US strikes.”
Even Ishaan Tharoor (Washington Post, 3/26/25), whose column on the Yemen strikes was both more humane and more geopolitically realistic than anything else published by the Post, chose not to bring in any mention of international law.
The fact is, unnecessarily bombing a civilian building, with civilians inside, is a war crime. A civilian building is any building not immediately being used for military purposes. Even if by some interpretation, a military officer’s girlfriend’s building could be construed as a military target, the attacker is responsible for ensuring that any civilian losses are not excessive compared to military gain (the “proportionality” rule), and ensuring that “all feasible precautions must be taken to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”
In this case, the “military” nature of the target is dubious at best. Further, the Houthis had not attacked US ships since December, before Trump’s inauguration (Responsible Statecraft, 3/21/25). When the Houthis attempted to respond to the recent airstrikes, a US military officer mocked the Houthis’ “level of incompetence,” claiming their retaliatory missile fire “missed by a hundred miles” (New York Times, 3/19/25). In other words, Houthi missiles are not such an imminent threat that killing over a dozen Yemeni civilians might be “proportional” to the military gain of killing their top missileer.
Finally, “all feasible precautions” were not taken to protect civilian life. Based on Waltz’s message, the military was tracking this officer, and chose to kill him only once he entered a building with civilians inside.
As the Times itself (1/16/23) has reported, “it is considered a war crime to deliberately or recklessly attack civilian populations.” The Washington Post editorial board (7/2/23) agreed, citing “large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure” and “methodical violence against…noncombatants” as violations of international law. But these confident media assertions are in reference to Russia, an official enemy of the United States.
The strike against the “missile guy” is just one example of the indiscriminate bombing with which the US punishes Yemen. This recent offensive by the United States has destroyed plenty of residences, and airstrikes have hit a Saada cancer hospital twice (Drop Site, 3/16/25; Cradle, 3/26/25).
‘A more aggressive campaign’
After the US bombs an apartment building, killing more than a dozen civilians, the New York Times (3/16/25) turns to sources who declare that a “more aggressive” approach is needed.
Houthi-controlled Yemen sits on one side of the Bab-el-Mandeb, a narrow strait between the Arabian Peninsula and Africa that is a choke point for shipping between Asia and Europe. The Houthis announced in October 2023 that in opposition to the war on Gaza, they would use their strategic position to attack ships “linked to Israel” (Al Jazeera, 12/19/23). The Houthis have succeeded in disrupting Red Sea trade to the point that Israel’s only port on the Red Sea, the Port of Eilat, was forced to declare bankruptcy (Middle East Monitor, 7/19/24). As revealed by the Signal chat leak, the main motivation for the new air campaign on Yemen was to “send a message” and reopen the shipping lanes (New York Times, 3/25/25).
As US bombs fell on Yemen, the New York Times indulged in a variety of foreign policy reporting cliches. A day after the strikes began, the Times (3/16/25) took a survey of what should be done about the supposed threat the Houthis posed in the Middle East:
Some military analysts and former American commanders said on Sunday that a more aggressive campaign against the Houthis, particularly against Houthi leadership, was necessary to degrade the group’s ability to threaten international shipping.
The only voices the Times offered as a counterpoint were spokesmen for Iran’s foreign ministry, Russia’s foreign ministry and Hezbollah. When the only people condemning the air campaign are America’s worst enemies, it’s not hard for the reader to see who they’re supposed to side with.
The fact is, the Houthis have withstood a decade of strikes by Saudi Arabia and the United States with no signs of faltering. Indeed, as Jennifer Kavanagh (Responsible Statecraft, 3/17/25) has pointed out, the Houthis’ “willingness to take on American attacks lend them credibility and win them popular support.” In a story whose subheadline mentions a claim that children were killed, the Times is irresponsible to present the only solution as more bombs, more aggression, more killing.
‘Iranian-backed’
The US has long been implicated in a string of atrocities in Yemen (Guardian, 8/19/18).
In each of their five stories on the strikes, the New York Times referred to the “Iran-backed” or “Iranian-backed” Houthis, playing into the falsenotion that the Houthis are little more than Iran’s lapdogs in the Arabian Peninsula. Even the Washington Post, to their credit, was able to find a distinction between an ally of Iran and a proxy (e.g. 3/15/25, 3/27/25).
The Times also had a case of amnesia over the circumstances of Yemen’s protracted civil war and famine. Two stories (3/15/25, 3/27/25) mentioned the Houthi victory over a “Saudi-led coalition,” culminating in a 2022 truce, still holding tenuously. What was left unsaid was the US role in that conflict.
During the Yemeni civil war, the United States provided Saudi Arabia with plenty of firepower and logistical support to prosecute their brutal military intervention. The Department of Defense gave over $50 billion in military aid to Saudi Arabia and the UAE between 2015 and 2021 (Responsible Statecraft, 3/28/23). Despite campaign promises to the contrary, the Saudi blockade and accompanying humanitarian crisis were intact over two years into President Biden’s term of office.
Infamous airstrikes using US-made weapons include a wedding bombing that killed 21, including 11 children, a school bus bombing that killed 40 elementary school-aged boys along with 11 adults, and a market bombing that killed 107 people, including 25 children, just to name a few (CNN, 9/18; Guardian, 8/19/18; Human Rights Watch, 4/7/16). The continuous provision of weapons, training and logistical support amounted to complicity in war crimes (Human Rights Watch, 4/7/22).
Deadly effects
The Yemen where tens of thousands of children died as a result of a US-backed blockade (New York Times, 11/21/18) seems like a different country than the one discussed in a bumbling group chat.
The civil war in Yemen, which began in late 2014, has killed hundreds of thousands. From 2015–22, Saudi-led, US-backed airstrikes killed nearly 9,000 civilians, including over 1,400 children.
More deadly than the bombs and other weapons of war are the indirect effects of the war, namely disease and famine. A 2021 UN report estimated that 60% of the 377,000 deaths in the Yemeni civil war came from indirect causes (France24, 11/23/21). By 2018, Save the Children reported that by a “conservative estimate,” 85,000 children had died from hunger (New York Times, 11/21/18). Today, nearly 40% of the Yemeni population are undernourished, and nearly half of children under five are malnourished.
This ongoing famine started during the war, and has been enforced by a Saudi blockade. While the 2022 truce allowed a trickle of international shipping to Houthi-controlled Yemen, cuts in humanitarian aid have kept Yemenis in precarity (The Nation, 7/27/23).
Since the Yemeni civil war began, not enough attention has been paid to the compounding crises in the region: the civil war itself, the accompanying famine and the Biden administration’s own ill-advised bombing campaign. As juicy as one more Trump administration blunder might be, newsrooms should not lose track of the fact that this military offensive, just beginning, is already stained by violations of international law.
