A Houthi fighter mans a machine gun mounted on a truck during a parade for people who attended Houthi military training as part of a mobilization campaign, in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

i24 News — A secret collaboration between Beijing and the Houthis has been uncovered, revealing a vast network of supply of sophisticated armaments that threatens the stability of the Red Sea. According to American intelligence sources speaking to i24NEWS, the Iran-backed Yemeni terror group is using Chinese-made weapons in their attacks, in exchange for immunity for ships flying the Chinese flag.

US intelligence services have identified a complex supply chain set up by the Houthis in China since the beginning of the attacks in the Red Sea. This network allows them to acquire advanced components and guidance equipment for their ballistic and cruise missiles.

Even more worrying, Houthi leaders are reportedly planning to manufacture hundreds of cruise missiles capable of striking Persian Gulf states, using these same Chinese components. Washington has repeatedly passed on this information to Beijing since September, including detailed lists of Chinese companies involved in this arms mechanism.

“Houthi officials have visited China several times last summer and fall, probably for meetings with high-ranking officials of the regime,” says a diplomatic source. In the face of Beijing’s inaction, the United States now threatens to act jointly with Israel to cut off these Chinese trade networks from the global financial system.

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A Torah scroll. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

In the Torah, Joseph (Yosef) comes across as a consummate politician. It starts off with the way he deals with his brothers, who have come down to buy grain and do not recognize him. The process of how he toys with them, threatening them, then compromising and threatening them again, seems to be a matter of taking revenge for what they did to him. But on the other hand, he has to be certain that they will now accept his authority in Egypt, given how much they rebelled at the start against what they saw as his arrogance.

The constant tension resolves when he finally breaks down and reveals himself to them — and then reassures them that he’s going to protect them and feed them. He harbors no ill feeling towards them because, as he tells them, this is all part of a Divine plan.

He invites the family to come down to live in Egypt. Yosef presents his brothers to Pharaoh, but in such a way as to make sure that they are neither seen as a threat, nor are they seen as fodder for Pharaoh’s regime. Yosef has already made clear that he wants his family to be living in Goshen, which is to the north of Egypt towards the Nile Delta — distant from the main seats of Egyptian power. This is why he emphasizes to Pharaoh that his brothers are shepherds. He has an agenda which is to avoid the integration of his family into Egyptian life and to make sure that they are not seen as a threat as other migratory tribes, such as the Hapiru, were.

Yosef then carries out the plan he always had in mind of how to deal with the famine. When it hits, he requires people with money to pay for the grain, both to eat and to plant it, in the hope of achieving a harvest. But then when the money runs out, they have to provide him with their livestock. When that runs out, they offer their land, and finally they agree that they will become serfs to Pharaoh, who in exchange will provide them with grain for their labor. They become indentured slaves working the land, giving 1/5 to Pharaoh and keeping 4/5 both for food and for agriculture. To use modern terminology, he nationalizes everything.

At the same time, he moves the population away from their original locations to make sure that they break their ties to their ancestral lands — the sort of policy Assyrians used towards those people it conquered. Thus, he ensured they will not re-constitute and become a threat.

The only people that he doesn’t apply this to are the priests. You might have thought that the ordinary Egyptians would have resented what had happened, losing their freedom. Maybe in due course, this will explain why under a new regime, Yosef was forgotten whether intentionally or not that. At any rate, in the Torah this week, it says that they were very grateful to him for this solution.

The lessons we can learn are applicable today. Politicians trying to enforce rigorous laws that may give rise to opposition, have to calculate who to alienate or not to alienate. Harsh policies might require sweetening but also appealing to self-interest. A politician has to show firmness and determination to do what he or she feels appropriate, and yet at the same time, must try to show a human caring persona to win popular support.

Yosef is an example of a good and effective politician.

The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.

The post Why Joseph in Egypt Was a Great Politician first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Agnes Keleti, former Olympic gold medal winning gymnast poses for a picture at her home in Budapest, Hungary, May 3, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

Five-time Olympic champion Hungarian gymnast Agnes Keleti, the world’s oldest living Olympic gold medalist and a survivor of the persecution of Jews in World War Two, died at the age of 103 on Thursday, the Hungarian Olympic Committee said.

Born as Agnes Klein in Budapest on Jan. 9, 1921, Keleti joined the National Gymnastics Association in 1938 and won her first Hungarian championship in 1940, only to be banned from all sports activities that year because of her Jewish origin.

“Agnes Keleti is the greatest gymnast produced by Hungary, but one whose life and career were intertwined with the politics of her country and her religion,” the International Olympic Committee said in a profile on its website.

The HOC said Keleti escaped deportation to Nazi death camps, where hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were killed, by hiding in a village south of Budapest with false papers. Her father and several relatives died in the Auschwitz death camp.

She won her first gold at the Helsinki games in 1952 aged 31, when most gymnasts had long been retired, the HOC said.

Keleti reached the peak of her career in Melbourne in 1956, where she won four gold medals and became the oldest female gymnast to win gold, the HOC said. A year later Keleti settled in Israel, where she married and had two children.

Her 10 Olympic medals, including five golds, rank Keleti as the second most successful Hungarian athlete of all time, the HOC said. She has also received multiple Hungarian state awards.

The post Jewish Sports Legend, Holocaust Survivor Agnes Keleti Dies at 103 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.