Houthis in Yemen Threaten Red Sea Shipping

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

On Dec. 11, the Houthi regime in Yemen declared a blockade of all Israeli and Israel-related shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a narrow maritime choke point that joins the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. So there is now a potential threat to some 8.8 million barrels a day of oil shipped through one of the world’s crucial maritime waterways.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the de facto Houthi president of Yemen, tweeted: “The Yemeni Armed Forces announce that they will prevent the passage of ships heading to the Zionist entity of any nationality, if they do not enter the Gaza Strip where they need food and medicine, and it will become a legitimate target for our armed forces.”

The Houthis, more formally known as Ansar Allah or Supporters of Allah, are Zaidi Muslims associated with Shi’ite Islam. The movement is named after its first influential leader Seyyed Badr al-Din al-Houthi.

They seized the country’s capital Sana’a in 2014 and deposed the government, triggering a civil war that has killed tens of thousands. Their attempt to conquer all of Yemen brought Iran in on the side of the Zaidis, their fellow Shiites. They now control most of the country.

The Houthis became part of the current conflict between Hamas and Israel soon after the war began Oct. 7, when they declared that they were planning to join the combat and attack Israel. Hames, they stated, “is an integral part of the Palestinian people and it is impossible to disconnect them from the resistance. We are part of the axis of resistance, and nothing will stop the resistance in Yemen, notwithstanding the geographical distance.”

The movement’s religious leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, warned that his fighters would retaliate if “red lines” were crossed, including if the United States intervened in Gaza.

On Nov. 19, the Houthis captured the Galaxy Leader in the Red Sea and took its 25 crew members hostage. A week later, the USS Mason, a U.S. Navy destroyer, responded to a distress call from a commercial vessel, the Central Park, as five armed men attempted to seize the ship. They were captured by U.S. personnel.

On Dec. 6, the U.S. Navy shot down a Houthi drone launched toward the Bab al-Mandeb. The Houthis also said they had fired a barrage of ballistic missiles toward Eilat, Israel, which lies on the Gulf of Aqaba at the head of the Red Sea.

The Houthis on Dec. 10 launched attacks against three commercial vessels in the Red Sea. And the American destroyer, the USS Carney, shot down a Houthi drone that was heading toward it. Gen. Mohammad Ali al-Ghaderi, a Houthi naval commander, said of the strikes: “The waters of our land will become the graveyard of the Zionist enemy’s ships.” On Dec. 14, they struck two more cargo ships, the Alanya and Palatium, which were heading to Israel. A day earlier they had targeted the Maersk Gibraltar with drones.

The United States has been consulting with allies about potential military action against the Houthis. On Dec. 9, the French Navy said the frigate Languedoc had shot down two drones in the Red Sea coming from a port city in Yemen controlled by the Houthis.

Israel’s response has been confined to intercepting incoming missiles and drones. Israel has established an integrated missile defence system to address multiple threats. It possesses the Arrow 2 for shorter range ballistic missiles, and the Arrow 3 for long-range missiles.

On Nov. 3, in the first ever use of the Arrow 3 system, Israel intercepted a missile heading for Eilat. On Nov. 22, an Israeli fighter plane intercepted a cruise missile that was fired towards Eilat.

For the moment, Israel’s Zim shipping company has announced that it is rerouting its ships via Africa’s Cape of Good Hope -- delaying goods by weeks. But unless Houthi attacks end soon, the economic cost of the Houthi threat to shipping could oblige Israel to weigh the option of retaliating.

Seeking to portray the conflict as a broad Muslim struggle, Iran hopes to expand the participants in the struggle against Israel and the United States. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently told students at a meeting that “the battle is not between Gaza and Israel, but between the force of faith and the force of arrogance.” Under Iranian tutelage, the Houthis have begun spouting anti-Israel slogans.

The Houthis enjoy the support of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, including weapons smuggling, combat training, funding, and assistance in weapons manufacturing. They are also providing the Houthis with intelligence to help identify Israeli-owned vessels in the Red Sea.

As Nasser Imani, a political analyst in Tehran who is close to the government, noted recently, “We think Houthis in Yemen will become more of a threat to Israel in the long run than Hamas or even Hezbollah. Iran considers them a major player and part of the collective strategy of the resistance axis.”

Farea Al-Muslimi, a Middle East and North Africa research fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, echoed this view. “The Red Sea is the most recent but clearly the most crucial front line of the ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel and the United States in the Middle East.”

 

Latin American Leaders Speak About the Hamas-Israel War

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Most Latin American governments initially criticized the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, though some also expressed solidarity with Palestinians. But as the conflict continued, displeasure with Israel’s invasion of Gaza led to increased friction with the Jewish state.

Before the war began, Israel maintained diplomatic relations with all Latin American countries except Cuba and Venezuela. Bolivia broke off ties with Israel in 2009 but reinstated them in 2020.

On the right, a handful of countries with conservative governments, in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay expressed strong support for Israel.

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a Salvadoran with Palestinian ancestry, condemned Hamas. “I’m sure the best thing that could happen to the Palestinian people is for Hamas to completely disappear,” he wrote Oct. 9 on X, formerly Twitter. “Anyone who supports the Palestinian cause would make a great mistake siding with those criminals.”

Argentina’s 200,000 Jews make up the largest Jewish population in Latin America, and the sixth-largest in the world. On X, outgoing Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez expressed “strong condemnation” of the “brutal terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas from the Gaza Strip against the State of Israel.”

Chile’s government also condemned the attacks on Israel “in the strongest terms,” expressing “sympathy and solidarity with the Israeli people” and families of the victims.

Colombia was less positive. Immediately following the Hamas rampage, Colombia’s Foreign Ministry released a press statement saying the government “strongly condemns terrorism and attacks against the civilian population.” One day later, though, the statement was replaced by a new press release that no longer included the word “terrorism.”

Colombian President Gustavo Petro Oct. 8 also stated on X that, had he lived in Germany in the 1930s, “I would have fought on the side of the Jews,” but “if I had lived in Palestine in 1948, I would have fought on the Palestinian side.” Israel’s ambassador to Bogota, Gali Dagan, lambasted Petro’s statements, engaging in a fiery exchange with the president on X.

In Mexico, President Lopez Obrador took a hands-off stance on the conflict, and the Foreign Ministry released a lengthy statement after the October massacre declaring that it was in favour of a “comprehensive, definitive two-State solution to the conflict that addresses Israel’s legitimate security concerns and allows for the consolidation of a politically and economically viable Palestinian State.”

Anti-Israel sentiment grew on the continent as casualties mounted in Gaza. Bolivia’s foreign ministry announced Oct. 31 that it was severing diplomatic ties with Israel over what it called Israel’s crimes against humanity. Bolivia’s current president, Luis Arce, is a member of the country’s left-wing Movement for Socialism party. Israel characterized his decision as a “surrender to terrorism and to the Ayatollah’s regime in Iran.”

Two other nations led by leftist leaders followed suit. Colombia and Chile, the latter home to the largest Palestinian diaspora outside the Middle East, both recalled their ambassadors to Israel. Chile’s President Gabriel Boric stated that “innocent civilians” were the “main victims of Israel’s offensive,” though he also condemned “the attacks and kidnappings perpetrated by Hamas.”

But Colombia’s Petro remained adamant in his condemnation of Israeli actions, accusing the Jewish state of “unacceptable” human rights violations.  “It’s called genocide; they’re doing it to remove the Palestinian people from Gaza and take it over,” Petro maintained on X.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry in turn called on them to “explicitly condemn the Hamas terrorist organization. Israel expects Colombia and Chile to support the right of a democratic country to protect its citizens, and to call for the immediate release of all the abductees, and not align themselves with Venezuela and Iran in support of Hamas terrorism.”

Soon afterwards, Honduras also recalled its ambassador for consultations on what it described as the “serious humanitarian situation” facing Palestinians. Citing what it called “unceasing indiscriminate bombing,” the central American of Belize also suspended diplomatic relations.

Argentina and Brazil increased their criticism of Israel’s military operations, with Buenos Aires contending that the “humanitarian situation in Gaza is ever more alarming.” Nothing, Argentina’s Foreign Ministry insisted, “justifies the violation of international humanitarian law and the obligation to protect the civilian population in armed conflicts.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called on Israel to end its bombing of Gaza. “We are seeing, for the first time, a war in which the majority of those killed are children,” Lula wrote on X. “Stop! For the love of God, stop!”

Two anti-American states strongly condemned Israel. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua asserted that the country was always in “solidarity with the Palestinian cause,” while Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro declared that the Israelis “want to exterminate the Palestinian people.”

Even harsher attacks came from Cuba’s Communist government, which immediately called the conflict “a consequence of 75 years of permanent violation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and Israel’s aggressive and expansionist policies.”

Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters, led by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, marched in Havana Nov. 23 in front of the American embassy calling to “free Palestine” and accusing Israel of “genocide.”

The UN General Assembly Dec. 12 voted overwhelmingly to demand a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. Of the Latin American countries, only Guatemala and Paraguay opposed it. Panama and Uruguay abstained. Clearly, Israel has far more enemies than close friends south of the Rio Grande.

 

Antisemites Seek Control of Higher Education and the Streets

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Winnipeg] Jewish Post & News

Two things are essential for an anti-democratic political movement to succeed: ideological justification by academics and intellectuals, and control of the streets by violent mobs. Since Oct. 7, when Hamas invaded Israel, we have now seen both, in Canada and elsewhere.

I’m not going to repeat all the evidence for this, because we already know that many universities have become, as someone termed it, “incubators of hate” led by so-called “woke” professors spewing antisemitic theories regarding Israel and Jews to their students. Concurrently, there are the massive “anti-Zionist” demonstrations that have taken over the streets and public spaces in major cities, along with violent activities targeting Jewish institutions.

“If there has been a striking new element in the current cycle of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed, apart from the scale of the killing, it has been the way that pro-Palestinian protesters have denounced a ‘settler colonial’ Israel, with Palestinians cast as the dark-skinned indigenous people and Israelis as white oppressor interlopers,” wrote New York Times journalist Roger Cohen in his Dec. 10 column.

This Manichean ideology presents us with a “world-historical” struggle between oppressed non-white peoples trying to resist white, particularly “Zionist” domination, while their evil oppressors wish to retain their power and privileges. A previous version of such a “conflict,” Nazism, posited a similar struggle, that one between so-called “Aryans” and Jews.

Antisemitism today is expressed as seeking to undo the Jewish state of Israel because of “settler-colonialism,” and it now has a huge youth constituency. Most politically inclined members of this younger generation were reared in this anti-colonialist discourse of modern university education. Propaganda masquerades as teaching at many colleges and universities these days.

Inculcated with these values, they are currently making full use of a “victim hierarchy” that permits them to define Jews as “white” and thus Israelis as de facto “oppressors,” with the state itself an illegitimate colonial entity that must be eliminated and its Jewish population expelled or eradicated.

Violence, including terrorism, is justified as a legitimate measure against that evil. It’s thus no surprise that so many university students responded to the Oct. 7 massacre by justifying and even glorifying Hamas’s barbarity. 

This worldview is now well entrenched among students, administrators, and faculty alike. Antisemitism on the campus has moved, in many institutions, from speech to conduct, because many professors have created a hostile atmosphere toward Jewish students and Jewish colleagues. Amazingly, we recently saw three presidents of elite American universities fail to denounce calls at their institutions for the genocide of Jews.

 Calls for global intifada, Jew-cleansing, and Jew-shaming now pass for some kind of civil right. In their continuing marches and demonstrations, mobs have no compunction in bellowing bloodthirsty, eliminationist propaganda at Jews. One author has called it “bloodlust by proxy.” That this hostility to Israeli policy in Gaza has slid into antisemitism is now impossible to deny. 

Unfortunately, we know a terrible precedent for this union of the intellectuals and the mob. Nazi ideology, too, was not formulated by street thugs. Historian Max Weinreich had published his book Hitler’s Professors in 1946, noting that German scholarship provided the ideas and techniques that led to and justified unparalleled slaughter. All too many Nazi war criminals were holders of PhDs. 

As historian Niall Ferguson reminds us, in an article published in the Free Press of Dec. 11, “Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich.” The “final solution of the Jewish question” began, he has written, with words — “to be precise, it began as lectures and monographs and scholarly articles.”

A hundred years ago by far the best universities in the world were in Germany. More than a quarter of all the Nobel prizes awarded in the sciences between 1901 and 1940 were awarded to Germans; only eleven percent went to Americans.

The Nazis established new groups for different professions, from doctors to lawyers. In fact, medical doctors represented, proportionately the highest percentage of professionals in the Nazi movement. After all, who hasn’t heard of the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, the most prominent of a group of Nazi doctors who conducted medical experiments at death camps like Auschwitz?

 As for the bully-boys of the movement, the Sturmabteilung (SA) or Stormtroopers, they terrorized “undesirables,” especially Jews, and their methods of violent intimidation played a key role in Hitler’s rise to power.

Will people stand up to the modern day “big lie” being promulgated in our own universities and on our streets? From many recent studies, we have an increasingly detailed picture of the extensive involvement of many “ordinary” Germans in Nazi crimes. 

Already in spring 1933 the new distinction between “Aryan” and “non-Aryan” began to sever relationships, and many Germans after 1933 contributed to discrimination, exclusion and the radicalization of violence. 

Though there has been a considerable amount of damage to Jewish businesses, attacks on synagogues, and physical assaults on individual Jews this autumn, we have not seen an equivalent to Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom of November 1938.

All this certainly sounds alarmist – but ask yourself, did you foresee what has been going on in this country for the last few months?