The stunning audacity of Yemen’s drone strike on Tel Aviv

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The stunning audacity of Yemen’s drone strike on Tel Aviv

Yemen’s unprecedented drone strike on Israel’s economic powerhouse has further shattered the occupation state’s perceived invulnerability. Moreover, it announced the launch of Ansarallah’s fifth phase of war: ‘Target Tel Aviv.’

JUL 24, 2024

On 19 July, a low-altitude drone breached Tel Aviv airspace from the sea and detonated, causing one fatality and injuring ten others.

The incident sent shockwaves through the occupation state, with a panicked populace and bewildered policymakers grappling with the Israeli army’s “mega-failure” to intercept a single drone amid prolonged aggression against Gaza and the mounting tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The attack’s impact was magnified by its direct hit on Tel Aviv, the heart of Israel’s governmental and economic power, starkly exposing inadequacies in its defense strategies and further alarming a population that has for months been questioning the effectiveness of its military preparedness.

It wasn’t long before the de facto Yemeni authorities in Sanaa claimed responsibility for the attack, calling the strike a retaliation for Israeli massacres and threatening more to come.

But how did a Yemeni drone reach the heart of Israel’s most fortified region and strike a blow to Israeli military pride?

Tactical evolution of suicide drones

Suicide drones, as they are known, are a relatively modern weapon, posing significant challenges even for technologically advanced states like the US and Israel. These drones vary in range, warhead size, speed, and guidance methods.

Analysis of the wreckage revealed that the “Yaffa” drone, an enhanced version of Yemen’s Sammad drones, was employed in the operation. The name is deeply symbolic as it references the ancient port city of Jaffa, also known as Yaffa in Arabic, which now forms part of modern-day Tel Aviv.

Its rectangular wing shape and V-shaped tail distinguish it, but it is notably the more powerful 275 cc (16 kW) engine that sets it apart. This engine enables the drone to cover distances exceeding 2000 kilometers – sufficient to reach Tel Aviv from Yemen.

Unlike with ballistic missiles, the difficulty in tracking drones lies in their ability to take unconventional paths, maneuver through winding routes, and hide behind terrain features, making them hard to detect by radar systems.

This detection challenge is a daily issue in northern occupied Palestine, where drones operated by Lebanese resistance groups often go unseen by the increasingly blinded occupation army.

Moreover, drones are typically constructed from lightweight materials such as fiberglass, carbon fiber, or various reinforced plastics that do not reflect radar waves effectively, which is crucial for detection and tracking.

Their low speeds reduce the need for the metallic compositions necessary in constructing conventional military hardware like missiles and fighter jets. Consequently, drones can be mistaken for birds by radar systems. This confusion has occurred regularly in northern occupied Palestine since the war’s onset, with Israel’s Iron Dome defense system spotted expending its limited supply of $50,000 projectiles shooting at birds during this conflict.

Yaffa’s route to Tel Aviv

The suicide drone likely took an unconventional path to evade detection. Previous Yemeni attempts have been intercepted in Egyptian Sinai airspace, with Israeli-allied Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt contributing to these detection and interception efforts.

On the night of the attack, however, no US aircraft carrier groups were in the Red Sea, and the nearest carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was positioned in the Indian Ocean. Israel’s air force has suggested that the drone may have taken a non-traditional route via Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt, crossing near the Suez Canal before entering the Mediterranean and turning east toward Tel Aviv.

Some aspects of that route seem unlikely: the Suez Canal area is heavily patrolled by Egyptian air defense, with its 8th Brigade stationed there, so the Israeli announcement may have been an attempt to pressure Egypt.

Israel’s response: Bombing Hodeidah

On 20 July, Israeli aircraft launched punishing airstrikes on the besieged Yemeni port of Hodeidah, specifically targeting areas designated for fuel and oil storage, as well as destroying port cranes used for loading and unloading cargo and a power station.

But these were civilian targets in a country already suffering from the effects of the Saudi-led coalition blockade, which has caused severe shortages of fuel and essential resources needed for power generation and transportation.

The strike at these particular target banks, which killed at least six and wounded dozens of others, appears to be primarily aimed at creating significant explosions and large fires to help Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu score points at home.

But the Israeli response against civilian targets also reveals that Tel Aviv suffers from a dearth of intelligence on potential Yemeni military targets. It was also evident that the selected targets were ones that Saudi Arabia and the US have refrained from striking due to fears of Yemeni retaliation, which could strike Saudi commercial ports or oil exports in one of the world’s most vital energy passages.

Indeed, Riyadh was quick to deny any involvement in the assault, fearing reprisals from Sanaa, although reports that Israeli jets used Saudi airspace for this attack suggest otherwise.

Video footage shows that Israel used F-35 and F-15 fighter jets, as well as Boeing 707 tanker aircraft, due to the distance involved – a range exceeding 4,000 kilometers round trip. Israeli-released footage suggests that the strikes were carried out using Spice guided missiles launched from outside the Yemeni air defense range.

Some of these missiles are equipped with boosters that extend their range up to 150 kilometers, which only showcased Israeli operational limitations against Yemen in a broader conflict, in which Sanaa’s air defenses will be surely activated against enemy aircraft, drones, and projectiles.

Yemen’s retaliation

Yemeni officials, led by Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi and Yemeni Armed Forces Spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree, quickly announced a decision to launch retaliatory strikes against Israel, in which they declared Tel Aviv to be an “unsafe zone” and warned of Yemen’s readiness for a “long war” against the occupation state.

Given the targeting of vital civilian infrastructure, this places several Israeli targets on the list of potential Yemeni target banks. These include fuel tanks in Haifa, clearly shown in video footage taken by a Hezbollah drone weeks ago, as well as fuel tanks in Ashkelon and the power stations adjacent to these tanks.

What concerns Israelis the most, however, is Yemen’s potential targeting of vital gas platforms in the Mediterranean Sea, stationary targets highly susceptible to significant ignition and explosion. While there are currently only three active Israeli gas fields – Karish, Tamar, and Leviathan – in operation, these fields have become essential to Israel’s energy independence.

Underestimating Sanaa’s resolve

The damaging Israeli strike on Hodeidah Port was based on an assumption by Tel Aviv that it would deter a Yemeni counterstrike. But Yemen’s Ansarallah Movement, which has endured years of punishing Saudi, Emirati – and now US and UK – military attacks, has shown no inclination whatsoever to halt its operations in support of Gaza.

While the Israelis may have felt an obligation for a quick military fix by striking Hodeidah – the port, incidentally, has already reopened for business – it comes at the expense of any logical assessments of losses and gains. Already facing strategic defeat in Gaza and unable to follow through with its threats against Lebanon, Tel Aviv has cracked open a new front with Yemen, the most fearless component of West Asia’s Axis of Resistance.

The Israelis are between a rock and a hard place, desperately trying to cleave to old narratives of regional military superiority to keep domestic faith in the Zionist project, yet unable to score victories anywhere.

Based on Yemen’s oft-declared resolve not to retreat from any escalation, it is expected that the outcome of the Hodeidah strike will lead to a compounded retaliatory operation against the occupation state. Israel, however, has limited operational freedom due to issues related to geographic distance – such as the airspace and uninterrupted refueling access required – which makes waging war against Yemen a nonstarter.

Harsher strikes on critical Israeli centers are likely to drive Israel into greater missteps and strategic errors, especially at a time when escalation and the further weakening of its deterrence are counterproductive to its interests.

By targeting the Yemenis directly, Israel has underestimated the resolve and capabilities of a formidable adversary, potentially choosing the worst possible opponents in this round of conflict.

Lili News 029

In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

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The people of Yemen are unvanquishable

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George Galloway

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The people of Yemen are unvanquishable

George Galloway

Jul 23, 2024#Biden #Aden #Yemen

One of my earliest memories was watching Scottish soldiers murdering Yemenis in the Crater district of Aden. We’ve been trying for hundreds of years to vanquish them, unsuccessfully Follow MOATS on YouTube #Biden #Aden #Yemen

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In Yemen, tribes hold the keys to power

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Saqr Abo Hasan

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Throughout the considerable history of internal conflicts in Yemen, the influential role of tribes has been critical in shaping the outcomes of external wars and internal power struggles.

These ancient tribal structures, deeply embedded in Yemen's social fabric and military dynamics, have played kingmaker roles in times of conflict – even during periods when the state, with its superior military and security apparatuses, was involved, as seen in the Six Saada Wars.

Spanning from 2004 to 2010, those wars pitted government forces against Yemen's Ansarallah resistance movement. But each side could only come to the fight with their own set of tribal allies.

Over the years, and especially today, Yemeni tribes in the northern regions – where the Houthi clan is based – have evolved into an "inexhaustible reservoir of fighters," embodying a formidable force that can be mobilized under the right political and social conditions.

As Yemeni writer Ali Abdullah al-Dhayani points out, these particular Yemeni tribes are "natural warriors, as their men – and even women in some areas – carry weapons as part of daily life."

The Hashid and Bakil tribes

Two prominent tribal confederations, Hashid (led by the Al-Ahmar family) and Bakil (led by the Abu Lahoum family), stand out as the most potent forces in Yemen's military, civil, and executive spheres. The Hashid tribe's clout has helped it secure four seats in the Yemeni House of Representatives for the sons of its late leader, Abdullah al-Ahmar.

Meanwhile, Saba Abu Lahoum, the scion of the Abu Lahoum family, now leads the Bakil tribe, inheriting the mantle from his father, Sinan Abu Lahoum, who passed away in 2021.

For decades, the Al-Ahmar and Abu Lahoum families have vied for the prestigious position of "Sheikh of the Sheikhs of Yemen," a title that has oscillated between them depending on prevailing political winds.

The loose alliance forged between the Hashid and Bakil encompasses the majority of tribes across northern and eastern Yemen, wielding significant influence. It is worth noting that Ansarallah belongs to the Bakil confederation, while late former president Ali Abdullah Saleh's Sanhan clan belongs to Hashid.

According to a study by Iraqi researcher Nizar al-Abadi, published on the Al-Mutamar.net website, which is affiliated with the Saleh-affiliated General People's Congress Party (GPC) in Yemen, "The number of Yemeni tribes is estimated at 200–168 of them are in the north and the rest in the south, with the majority of them living in mountainous areas."

Tribalism in politics

Successive governments in Yemen have historically sought to exert control over the tribes, employing various strategies to secure their allegiance. One notable example is Saleh's establishment of the "Tribal Affairs Authority" in the early 1980s, through which monthly salaries and bonuses were distributed to numerous tribal leaders across the country to ensure the alignment of their interests with Saleh's ruling GPC.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a leader of one of the tribes informs The Cradle that this government approach encouraged materialism and corruption within tribal leadership, effectively buying their loyalty for the Saleh government:

Joining the Tribal Affairs Authority was based on loyalty to the regime. It included hundreds of sheikhs who had no influence, while opponents of the ruling party were punished by being deprived of salaries. Sometimes, marginal figures were pushed to assume the leadership of the tribe.

After Saleh stepped down in early 2012, there were calls to abolish the Tribal Affairs Authority and invest its annual budget of around 13 billion Yemeni riyals into national infrastructure. But the successor government to Mohammed Salem Basindwa decided against this. It resumed Saleh's tried-and-tested financial approach "to win over the tribal leaders," according to a tribal source.

During Yemen's 2011 'Arab Spring,' Saleh established a new entity – the "Yemen Tribal Council" – to contain the growing tribal preference for the opposition, especially after several of these leaders, including Hashid Chief Sadiq al-Ahmar, publicly supported the popular uprising against his government.

According to political activist Shaalan al-Abrat, the tribes' involvement provided significant momentum to the so-called February 11 revolution in some Yemeni cities, such as Dhamar (100 km south of Sanaa).

In late 2012, the city of Saada in northern Yemen, an Ansarallah stronghold, witnessed the emergence of the "Tribal Popular Cohesion Council," which included tribal leaders supportive of the resistance movement. The council quickly expanded to include all tribes in and outside areas controlled by the current Ansarallah-led government based in the capital, Sanaa.

As Dr Abdo al-Bahsh, head of the political department at the Yemeni Studies and Research Center, describes the development:

[This council] was imposed by the Yemeni political reality and attempts to subject Yemen to American control ... [It] expresses the aspirations of the Yemeni people and their national will, far from sectarian, ethnic, regional, and narrow partisanship.

The council is headed by Dhaif Allah Rassam, a tribal leader from Saada Governorate. It has branches and representatives in all Yemeni governorates currently under Sanaa's control. Importantly, its influence extends to tribes outside their area of control, such as in the Shabwa, Ma'rib, and Al-Dhalea areas of Yemen.

Bolstering the argument that the tribes play a key role in dispute resolution, the council's Dhamar branch head, Abbas al-Amdi, says that throughout the years of aggression against Yemen, the council was instrumental in strengthening internal unity, ending tribal revenge wars, and supplying the fighting fronts with tribal fighters.

Ansarallah's political ascendancy

Yemen's political factions have long leveraged tribal affiliations to enhance popular support. The Saudi-backed Islah Party, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, strategically aligned itself with tribal leaders upon its establishment in 1990, with Abdullah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, chief of the Hashid tribe, assuming its presidency.

The assertion of tribal authority over state influence was exemplified by Hamid al-Ahmar – brother of Hashid's leader – when asked in an interview on Al-Jazeera whether he was afraid of returning to Sanaa after voicing support for Saleh's opposition: "Whoever has Sadiq [al-Ahmar] as his chief, and Hashid as his tribe, would not be afraid."

Tribal influence was strikingly evident during Saleh's ousting through the 2012 Gulf Initiative, in which a coalition of Yemeni tribal and political factions orchestrated that delicate transition of power. Around this time, Ansarallah capitalized on its tribal networks to expand its movement's influence, particularly in the country's northern regions. It gradually extended its reach across Yemen in an alliance with Saleh's GPC and the armed forces.

Ansarallah's adept handling of tribal structures facilitated their rise, merging ideology with tribalism to galvanize support. This symbiotic relationship contributed to their military and popular ascendancy, as noted by Yemeni political analyst Abdul Salam al-Nahari:

[Before 2012], finding someone who believed in Ansarallah was difficult due to years of misinformation. However, after 2015, society began to become aware of Ansarallah, especially among tribes exhausted by wars and internal conflicts … After the war in Yemen, the tribe has now become more cohesive after playing a major role in community steadfastness and in supplying the fighting fronts with weapons, money, and men.

Tribe-centric strategies

Nahari points out that the Saudi-led aggression against Yemen put the country at a crossroads: either remaining under American guardianship or breaking away from it at any cost. "The people of Yemen chose independence," he declares.

The foreign aggression united Yemenis during a time when Ansarallah was encouraging the advancement of many tribal leaders to the front ranks and giving them the opportunity to lead.

Examples abound. In the Al-Bayda region of central Yemen, tribal leader Saleh bin Saleh al-Wahbi founded the "Wahbi Brigades" in 2016. After his death in 2021, his son Bakil succeeded him.

In the Al-Razzamat region, north of Saada Governorate near the southern border of Saudi Arabia, tribal leader and member of the House of Representatives Abdullah Aydah al-Razami threw his weight behind Ansarallah Founder Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, and his tribe fought a fierce war against government forces after the latter's killing.

During the foreign aggression against Yemen, his son Yahya al-Razami was appointed commander of the Hamidan axis forces and assumed command of the "Death Brigades," the elite forces affiliated with Ansarallah.

Victory from God operation in 2019 when his forces captured thousands of soldiers loyal to the Yemeni government in Riyadh and seized a vast amount of weapons and military equipment.

Al-Nahari asserts that "fighting in any area where there is no popular incubator is like fighting on open ground." Ansarallah has actively sought to create supportive environments in strategic areas. By neutralizing certain tribes through treaties and agreements, such as in Marib, Ansarallah has effectively extended its influence with minimal combat cost, illustrating its strategic understanding of Yemen's tribal politics.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Saqr Abo Hasan is a Yemeni journalist and the executive director of Saqr Media Company, which specializes in media and advertising.

Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. And that's a fact.

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Nobody With Real Power Cares If You Refuse To Vote For Biden

Be sure to distribute this article as widely as possible. Pushing back against the Big Lie is really up to you.

Caitlin Johnstone
ROGUE JOURNALIST

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Nobody With Real Power Cares If You Refuse To Vote For Biden

The pathetic Sunak with semi-demented Joe Biden, a lifetime crook and murderer. That's Western leadership for you. (TGP screenshot)

First run on March 5, 2024

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Caitlin Johnstone · Nobody With Real Power Cares If You Refuse To Vote For Biden

There’s been a lot of talk in pro-Palestine circles about withholding votes for Biden in protest of his genocide in Gaza, which is of course fine, but the discourse around doing so often misses an important point. A lot of US voters erroneously think they’d be punishing the Democrats for Gaza by costing them the election, mistakenly assuming Democrats care about winning. They don’t.

a dementia patient to be in the White House anyway.

If the Democrats cared about getting your vote they’d be trying hard to earn it. They’re not trying because they don’t care.

The unelected empire managers who actually run the US power structure also don’t care who wins the election. They know they’ll still get their murder and militarism and capitalism and imperialism no matter who gets sworn in next year, whether it’s Biden or Trump or Harris or someone else. Nobody with any real power cares about your vote.

And that’s the real issue. That’s the real point that keeps getting missed here. The problem is not that the wrong people keep getting elected, it’s that the elections don’t matter and voters don’t have a say. It’s that humanity is dominated by a murderous globe-spanning power structure loosely centralized around Washington whose actual movements and behavior have effectively zero responsiveness to the will of the electorate.

You’re never going to be able to vote your way out of this mess, and you’re never going to be able to not-vote your way out of this mess, because the power of your vote has been undermined to a value of zero. That doesn’t mean there’s no way out of this mess, it just means there’s no way to get out of this mess using the fake plastic diversion toy they handed you to shut you up and trick you into thinking you have a say.

There are still plenty of other tools in the toolbox for forcing an evil power structure to stop doing evil things, but they require a whole lot of hands to bring about, and right now we don’t have them. Too many people have been successfully propagandized into believing the status quo works and their government is basically good, or successfully manipulated into giving up on politics altogether and throwing their attention into other things.

Before the people can begin using the power of their numbers to force real change, they’re going to have to be awakened to the reality that everything they’ve been told about their government, their society and their world is a lie. They’ve got to come to the understanding that the mainstream news media are nothing but propaganda and they live under the most murderous and tyrannical regime on this planet. They’ve got to realize that this power structure does not ultimately serve their interests, or the interests of their fellow human beings around the world. Only when enough eyes open to this reality can revolutionary change via direct action become possible.

The good news is it’s entirely possible to help get those eyes open. Everything you do to help share the truth with your fellow citizens and spread awareness of what’s really going on pushes this possibility toward reality. The more people open their eyes, the more people there are to help open others, so this could snowball from impossible to probable to inevitable quite quickly.

An entire globe-spanning empire rests on a closed pair of eyelids. Once they snap open, the whole thing will crumble. And from there we can begin building a healthy world together.

AND the following...

Worrying About TikTok During An Active Genocide

There’s a motherfucking genocide happening and we’re being told we need to be worried about TikTok and defaced portraits of Lord Balfour.

Caitlin Johnstone

March 11, 2024

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Caitlin Johnstone · Worrying About TikTok During An Active Genocide

❖

Benjamin Netanyahu says he’s going to ignore Biden’s “red line” against invading Rafah and launch the planned invasion of the Gaza Strip’s southernmost point anyway.

There will surely be grave consequences from Washington for this bold act of defiance, perhaps including Biden saying the words “red line” a second time.

telling MSNBC “It is a red line, but I am never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. So there is no red line I am going to cut off all weapons, so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them.”

❖

Leaked bodycam footage obtained by Al Jazeera reportedly shows a November IDF raid in Gaza in which Israeli troops executed a Palestinian civilian and then laughed and congratulated each other about it afterward.

There’s only so much footage you can watch of IDF soldiers gleefully behaving like monsters before you have to admit there’s something deeply and profoundly sick about Israeli society itself.

❖

The US is playing an imaginary game of The Floor Is Lava by pretending it can’t send aid through the front door of Gaza. Meanwhile Palestinians have been forced to play a very real and deadly game of The Floor Is Lava when trying to access supplies, frequently finding themselves targeted by snipers while trying to obtain food and water.

❖

There’s a motherfucking genocide happening and we’re being told we need to be worried about TikTok and defaced portraits of Lord Balfour.

❖

Empire managers really seem to believe they can ban TikTok and kids will go “Oh well I guess I’ll start reading The Atlantic and supporting genocide then.”

❖

Progressive Democrats who try to tell you that it’s important to support Biden even though he’s committing a genocide because he might do some nice things for Americans domestically are actually giving you a useful insight into exactly what’s so evil about western liberalism.

❖

Day after day after day we learn about new unbelievably fucked up things Israel is doing, but every time anyone responds to this deluge of information with a “Wow Israel’s pretty fucked up, hey?” they get people yelling “Oh so I guess you have a problem with JEWS! Okay, Hitler.”

And what’s funny is this really, truly isn’t about Jews. Both Zionists and genuine antisemites try to make such criticisms about Judaism and Jewishness, but that’s just baby-brained analysis. You could take pretty much any ethnic or religious makeup and replace them with the ones at play in Israel-Palestine dynamics and you’d see the same types of abuses. You’d see that state requiring nonstop war, violence, apartheid and abuse in order to maintain its status quo, and you’d routinely see footage of members of the supremacist group behaving like monsters toward the victim group.

Did you know studies have shown that being wealthy reduces a person’s empathy? Just that one tiered social system placing the wealthy above the non-wealthy turns the elevated class into garbage human beings. How much worse can we expect the privileged group to be in an ethno-supremacist apartheid state, where members of the privileged group are indoctrinated from birth into believing all kinds of justifications for this abusive dynamic?

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All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon, Paypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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This is a dispatch from our ongoing series by Caitlin Johnstone

Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician.

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Yemen vs the West, Israel at the ICJ and More – with Vanessa Beeley and Fiorella Isabel

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Vanessa Beeley and Fiorella Isabel

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Yemen vs the West, Israel at the ICJ and More - with Vanessa Beeley and Fiorella Isabel

vanessa beeley
Jan 31—Feb 4, 2024
Longtime human rights activist and author Vanessa Beeley joins international corresponden Fiorella Isabel (formerly with The Convo Couch) for a discussion of the Gaza genocide, and the heroic response by Yemen's Houthis against the imperialist West and the Zionist state.

What follows is a partial transcript of Fiorella's introduction
Follow Fiorella Isabel on Twitter, Telegram and Rumble

Welcome to the channel. Ever since Israel began its Siege of Gaza on October 7th bringing in death and destruction to nearly 27,000 people (now estmated at 35,000) including women and children, they have also been targeting nearby resistance areas and groups in other nations like in Lebanon Syria and of course Iran. Well this has all gotten a little bit more complicated since Yemen actually took on the role of protecting Palestinians in a way that uh others have not done in terms of attacking Israel's economic sector and with it of course its Western patrons...like the United States and others, specifically by blocking these ships. Now Yemen conducted their operation without hurting a single soul and they were able to eliminate these Israeli ships from proceeding, and they have said they will eliminate anybody that is associated with Israel.

This of course allowed the Israelis and the United States to now deem them terrorists and respond and attack them so that has all been happening in the Red Sea in the bab Al Deb area where of course it's going to affect more than anybody Europe because Ansar Allah (Supporters of God) military group has said they will not uh stop and continue defending Palestine and that all of the ships will be targeted if they are associated with Israel in any way, but they did say they will allow Chinese and Russian ships to come through so I also have to mention that [as we all know by now]Israel has been taken to court by South Africa at the international criminal justice court in The Hague and they are being accused of course of genocide and more and more countries are joining in various ways so to break all of this down with us is Vanessa Beeley. She is an independent journalist that has traveled extensively in the Middle East and she is also a UK columnist, and you can also follow her on Twitter or X and she also has a substack. Welcome Vanessa. Always lovely to be on with you. So Vanessa unfortunately things have gotten worse since the last time we spoke; there have been numerous attacks by Israel. Iit seems like Israel and the United States and their proxies can literally go around the world and bomb endlessly and really receive very little acknowledgement by the rest of the world that what they're doing is criminal.

Yu know they go with impunity really all around the world and doing this and it's really unfortunate but it has taken a great deal of human suffering and a great deal of total exposure of what's happening in Gaza in order to get people to understand what the US Empire is and what Israel is, and what their role has been in shaping or destroying geopolitics around the world, so I wanted to start by talking about the uh Israeli attack on Damascus where there were five military advisers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, and they were assassinated... my question to you is what exactly is Israel trying to achieve by doing this, especially given the fact that they are going after and decimating Gaza and Palestinians and that they are obviously right now on the the front of every major independent news outlet and many people's minds because of the South African case at the ICJ against them, yeah and I mean now there are various other countries coming forward with cases against Israel at the ICJ for occupation, for war crimes, and so on so the momentum is gathering against Israel on... of course in Damascus there has been a long history of the targeting of Iranian forces but also Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces that has gone really largely unremarked upon as you said by Western media on Saturday. Everybody heard the huge explosion in the area, which is really Central Damascus. Western Villas is a high security area; it's an area where you have offices, many of the embassies including Venezuela, South Africa, etc. I'm sure that wasn't a coincidence either, and actually it was five IRGC special military intelligence advisors but not only the advisers themselves of course, there were Syrian Army personnel killed because there's always sort of a fairly substantial military presence in this area, civilians, etc.

Someone told me yesterday the toll was up to 20 so you know it wasn't only the main targets which were of course the IRGC senior officials and this was around 9:20 9:30 in the morning...so this isn't some clandestin operation...This is in the center of Damascus; [the strike] destroyed a four-story building four missiles were reported to have been used to take out the building and uh the people inside and of course that also makes a mockery of their claims that they're using discriminate bombing in Gaza if they can hit a four-story building in the center of Damascus and carry out an assassination of IRGC officials then why are they flattening literally thousands of mosques, houses, apartments, hospitals, etc. in Gaza. You know everything that comes out of their mouths is a lie, basically and what we're seeing is just an increasing, an expansion of the conflict.

Last night 2 a.m. or rather this morning at 2 a.m. Hezbollah prevented an Israeli incursion into Southern Lebanon they've been speaking about a ground invasion in Lebanon since before Christmas, they've been speaking about reducing Beirut to the status of Kan Younis in Gaza in the South and they've been pushing the US really to come in on this, and basically support them in their claim that Hezbollah should move back North of the Lani River due to or according to UN resolution 1701 which came into effect to a degree after the 2006 War so you know the thing is Iran has already said it will retaliate. Iran already targeted Mossad assets in Iraq a few days before the Saturday assassination in Damascus so I don't really see how we can go anywhere but up at the moment. I mean everyone here is even the most rational and I would say conservative analysts here military in particular are saying --well you know-- we're heading to war, so it's very hard to see how else this is going to play out because the US is not a broker for peace, it's a broker for war and from the very beginning the US has allowed if not engineered this escalation by not allowing a ceasefire in Gaza. It vetoed every time yeah I like that you said the word engineered because I genuinely believe that based on the evidence and based on the fact that the United States supplies both money and weapons to Israel they are engineering and they are responsible for what Israel is doing because if the US tomorrow stops supplying weapons and funding to Israel I don't think Israel could continue doing these simultaneous attacks on Syria on Lebanon and on Gaza as well. And of course Iran has always been in the back of the mind of the United States; it doesn't matter whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican.

In fact you know we might get some respite if we get Donald Trump as president in terms of the Ukraine war, but be sure that the conservatives will go after the Middle East in many ways just like the Bush era. They have this idea that they —you know Israel—needs to be supported; that they need to go after Iran, and they despise Iran they vilify Iran to the entire United States and anybody that talks about Iran always focuses on the quote unquote violations of human rights and of course that has been the construct used to uh go after and Target Iran, and now we're seeing of course Israel, and the bar propaganda is always saying that oh Hezbollah, Palestinians, they're all the same, they're all part of Iran, they're all doing what Iran wants so. what I guess is do you believe that Hezbollah's response has been adequate because they have been uh also receiving criticism from people saying they haven't interfered enough that they haven't done what they should do —look at what Israel is doing—also that also has gone to Iran as well like what are you going to do now, and people who say this of course are not in war they're not the ones living in these regions a lot of them are just keeping mum so what's your opinion on that...also I mean it's a very unrealistic view of War.

You've only got to go back through history to the clean break Doctrine back in 97 where Netanyahu commissioned a paper to basically reshape the Middle East; you've then got the new Middle East the phrase coined by Condolizza Rice in 2006 in Tel Aviv you've got the greater Israel project, whichever one you go with the idea is pretty much the same that the Middle East will be completely reshaped in order to comply basically with both Israeli and Western agendas... we know from um Robert Kennedy Jr exactly what Israel represents to the US Democrat or Republican, doesn't make any difference... it represents their foothold in the

Middle East, their spy agency in the Middle East, their interference in the Middle East and their military Garrison in the Middle East. The protection of their interests in the Middle East and the prevention of the rise of Iran, Russia, China— any kind of global South alliances that might exclude Israel or weaken Israel are not to be permitted and Yoav Gallant two weeks ago made it very clear he said if we don't get a victory we will not survive in the Middle East. Israel knows this even after what they've done in in Gaza which is just I mean you know in my lifetime I never expected to see scenes like this again to this extent and they've already you know they've already lost [public] opinion in the Middle East; even states that have normalized relations or have talked about normalizing relationships with them, their populations are turning against Israel.

That's a huge Tipping Point and a massive danger point for Israel, so the only way out is up, the only way out is by escalation but of course the US, UK and EU, in particular Germany, are supporting it fully because they fundamentally pretty much all have this kind of neocolonialist agenda, this prevention of uh any alliance between Iran Russia China, any Global South Independence or or or um freedom from centuries actually of particularly Western imperialism, particularly British of course, and so therefore I don't see where we can go.

Netanyahu literally got himself elected on support supporting the so-called protests in Iran and uh promising to send arms to Ukraine what I see now is a very similar scenario developing in the Middle East to what developed in Ukraine in other words this crazy lunatic Zelinski is being used to to you know send Ukrainians, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to their deaths in a [senseless] war against Russia....

Plus...(special)

Genocide and Empire Examining October 7th and the Geopolitics of the War on Palestine

Jan 22, 2024

On January 7, 2024, in collaboration with UK Column, IC911 held the “Genocide and Empire” symposium. Five exemplary speakers came together with IC911 Research Director Piers Robinson to examine the geopolitical motivations behind the unfolding genocide in Gaza and the possibility that Israel allowed the October 7th attacks to happen in order to create a pretext for its ongoing military campaign.

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