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The Mindless Embrace of Houthi Terror
People gather near burning Israeli and US flags, as supporters of the Houthis rally to denounce air strikes launched by the US and Britain on Houthi targets, in Sanaa, Yemen, Jan. 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
“From the River to the Sea” is the chant of left-wing activists who have joined with “pro-Palestinian” (actually pro-Hamas) demonstrators in the US and Western Europe. Which river? Which sea? The few times that protestors have actually been asked the question, their lack of familiarity with the issues — and the geography — have been clear. It is stupefying to see “Queers for Palestine” on placards.
Now there is a new meme.
Extolling Iranian-armed and trained Houthi terrorists who were firing on American and other shipping, kidnapping crewmen from the ships, and firing missiles at southern Israel, and have now fired on American warships, the minions in the West wave signs proclaiming, “I stand with Yemen.” And “Hands off Yemen.”
Amazon helps.
One protester told The New York Post, “The Yemeni people and the Palestinian people are the only free people because we resist by any means necessary … As long as there is resistance in Palestine and Yemen, as long as there is a blockade on Yemen and Gaza, we will stand up to resist it.”
Really? The Houthis are not Yemen. And the only people attacking Yemen are the Houthis, who were listed as a sponsor of terror by the Trump administration after an attack on a Yemeni civilian airport.
Yes, the Republic of Yemen is at war with the Houthis.
Located in the heel of the boot of the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen has an internationally recognized government in Sanaa. Its majority population is Sunni with a Shiite minority, including Houthis, mainly in the southwest. Yemen has been at war internally for centuries — based primarily on tribal, not religious designations and aided by various outside agents. The most modern incarnation began with the Houthi capture of Sanaa in 2014.
There is no reason differing tribes can’t live inside one government — after all, Texas and California do — but while Saudi Arabia and the UAE fought for the majority Sunni government, Iran saw an opportunity to support a Shiite militia in an extraordinarily important place. The mullah government has been arming and training the Houthis since 2012.
[Side note: There is evidence of Jews living in Yemen dating to the 3rd century, living in the north, near Sanaa. The majority left for Israel beginning in the late 1940s. A UN report indicated that, while there had been about 50,000 Jews in Yemen until the middle of the 20th century, there was exactly one Jewish person left in March 2022.]
A Council on Foreign Relations report in 2022 deemed Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The UN estimates that 377,000 people were killed as of the beginning of 2022, and 21.6 million Yemenis are presently in dire need of assistance. [Compare this to Gaza if you like; or don’t.] All sides of the conflict are reported to have violated human rights and international humanitarian law. The US has provided approximately $5.4 billion in humanitarian assistance to Yemen with another $444 million in the offing for this year.
In one of his first official policy decisions in February 2021, President Joe Biden announced he was lifting the terror designation from the Houthis. He was oddly clear: “This decision has nothing to do with our view of the Houthis and their reprehensible conduct, including attacks against civilians and the kidnapping of American citizens. We are committed to helping Saudi Arabia defend its territory against further such attacks.”
So, the Houthis are acknowledged to behave like a terror organization, and their “reprehensible conduct” includes the use of child soldiers, but the Biden administration ignored it.
The Houthis increased their attacks on international shipping, and Iran was prompted to expand its assistance to its proxy. A US National Security Council spokesperson said, “Iranian-provided tactical intelligence has been critical in enabling Houthi targeting of maritime vessels since the group commenced attacks in November,” adding that the drones and missiles the Houthis have been using for the attacks were also provided by Iran.
After more than 100 Houthi attacks since October, the US plus the UK have taken the first serious steps to make them pay for international terrorism and piracy. We have done it before. When pirates raided ships off the coast of Somalia in the earlier part of the century, a coalition of nearly 30 countries from the US to Europe to Asia to Africa rotated through “The Combined Task Force” to stop them. And the coalition was successful.
Houthi attacks on shipping — and now on the US military in the Red Sea — are no less a threat to the world economy than the pirates were, and Iran’s support for those attacks cannot be tolerated. An American military response is legitimate and necessary.
If protesters want to stand with Houthi terrorism on land and at sea, so be it — but they ought to change the meme.
The author is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center. A version of this article was previously published by The Daily Caller.
The post The Mindless Embrace of Houthi Terror first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Columbia University Threatens to Expel Protesters Occupying Building
A student protester parades a Palestinian flag outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University, in New York, U.S., April 30, 2024. Photo: Mary Altaffer/Pool via REUTERS
Columbia University officials threatened to expel activists on Tuesday after they seized and occupied an academic building as the standoff between administrators and student protesters intensified.
Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, protesters broke windows and entered Hamilton Hall, where they unfurled a banner reading “Hind’s Hall,” symbolically renaming the building for a six-year-old Palestinian child killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.
Outside the academic building – the site of various student occupations dating back to the 1960s – protesters blocked the entrance with tables, linked arms to form a barricade and chanted anti-Israel slogans.
A university spokesperson said protesters had chosen to escalate an “untenable situation” and that the school’s top priority is the safety and order on campus.
“The work of the university cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules. Continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences,” school spokesperson Ben Chang said in a statement.
Chang said students occupying the building face expulsion.
One of the lead negotiators for the coalition of student protest groups said Columbia officials contacted him through mediators to ascertain the demands of the activists occupying Hamilton Hall.
“Once they decide to come back to the table we can talk about demands,” said Mahmoud Khalil, who said he was off-campus. “These students felt hurt and abandoned by the administration because it did not listen to their demands, so they had to do things differently.”
On Monday, Columbia University began suspending anti-Israel student activists, including Khalil, for refusing to dismantle the protest camp on the campus after the Ivy League school declared a stalemate in talks seeking to end the demonstration.
University President Nemat Minouche Shafik said in a statement that days of negotiations between student organizers and academic leaders had failed to persuade demonstrators to remove the dozens of tents set up to express opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza.
Protesters on the Manhattan campus are demanding that Columbia meets three demands: divestment from companies that support Israel’s government, transparency in university finances, and amnesty for students and faculty disciplined for their part in the protests.
Shafik this week said Columbia would not divest from finances in Israel. Instead, she offered to invest in health and education in Gaza and make Columbia’s direct investment holdings more transparent.
After students entered the Columbia building, the school sent out a notice saying access to the campus had been limited to students residing in residential buildings on campus and employees providing essential services.
New York City police officers arrived outside the school gates in unmarked cars moments after the protesters entered the building, the Columbia Spectator newspaper reported. Police told the paper they would only enter school grounds if someone was injured.
MORE PROTESTS, MORE ARRESTS
The building occupation at Columbia is at the center of Gaza-related protests roiling university campuses across the U.S. in recent weeks.
Students at dozens of campuses from California to New England have set up similar tent encampments to demonstrate their anger over the Israeli operation in Gaza.
The anti-Israel rallies have sparked intense campus debate over where school officials should draw the line between freedom of expression and hate speech.
At Cal Poly Humboldt University, police early on Tuesday swarmed the campus, where students were occupying a school building, and starting detaining people, local media reported.
Police late on Monday had declared the protest an unlawful assembly and warned people they faced arrest if they did not disperse.
The campus was earlier closed to all people except students and faculty because of the ongoing protest. Information was not immediately available on how many people may have been detained.
Civil rights groups have criticized law enforcement tactics on some campuses where police have clashed with protesters and have used chemical irritants to disperse crowds.
Arrests continued at a number of schools across the country.
Police detained about 30 protesters at their encampment at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill early on Tuesday after the university gave them until 6 a.m. local time to disperse, according to a statement from the school, noting that students had trespassed into classroom buildings overnight.
At the University of Texas at Austin, police arrested dozens of students whom they doused with pepper spray at a pro-Palestinian rally on Monday.
Protesters also squared off with police at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Police used chemical irritants on the crowd and detained numerous people. The protesters had set up a “liberation zone” of tents surrounded by barriers.
“After repeated warnings and refusal to disperse, law enforcement must protect Virginians,” Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, wrote on social media after the incident.
The post Columbia University Threatens to Expel Protesters Occupying Building first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Officials Threaten to Move to Jordan Amid Tensions with Qatar
Jordan’s King Abdullah II listens during a meeting in Amman, Jordan, May 26, 2021. Alex Brandon/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Amid escalating tensions with Qatar, senior Hamas officials have threatened to relocate to Jordan if forced to leave the Gulf state, sparking a diplomatic uproar.
The announcement came from Hamas’ deputy political head, Mousa Abu Marzouk, who stated that they would move to Jordan if Qatar decides to expel them. Jordan swiftly responded, emphasizing that any Palestinian seeking refuge in the kingdom must sever ties with the terrorist group.
The Jordanian government’s firm stance was articulated by senior officials, including Ziad Majali, who criticized Hamas for disregarding Jordan’s sovereignty and authority. Majali emphasized that Jordan had closed the chapter on hosting Palestinian factions and would not entertain Hamas’s return. The expulsion threat has reignited tensions between Hamas and Jordan, recalling the group’s expulsion from the kingdom in 1999.
While Qatar has not explicitly ordered Hamas officials to leave, recent signals suggest a cooling of ties, with the United States allegedly pressuring Qatar to reassess its relationship with the Palestinian group.
Hamas’s leadership has sought to rally support, accusing Jordanian authorities of neglecting their Palestinian brethren. However, Jordanian security sources have highlighted the kingdom’s commitment to maintaining order and sovereignty, signaling a zero-tolerance policy toward external interference.
The Jordanian government has asserted its authority, stressing that it will not tolerate any foreign entity undermining its internal affairs.
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“It Would Be an Unprecedented Antisemitic Hate Crime,” says Netanyahu
The International Criminal Court. Photo: ICC Website.
i24 News – Prosecutors from the International Criminal Court (ICC) have reportedly initiated interviews with staff from Gaza’s major hospitals as part of their investigation into possible war crimes in the region.
This marks the first official confirmation that ICC investigators have engaged with medical personnel regarding potential crimes in the Gaza Strip.
According to sources familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, ICC prosecutors have conducted interviews with individuals who previously worked at Gaza City’s main hospital, Shifa, as well as the primary hospital in Khan Younis, Nasser. These interviews come as part of the ICC’s ongoing efforts to gather evidence and testimonies related to alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to the prospect of ICC action by condemning it as a move that could set a dangerous precedent. Netanyahu asserted on Friday that any ICC move would not impact Israel’s actions on the ground but warned that it could establish a precedent threatening soldiers and public figures.
He further characterized the possibility of an ICC arrest warrant as an “unprecedented antisemitic hate crime.”
The post “It Would Be an Unprecedented Antisemitic Hate Crime,” says Netanyahu first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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