Geez. Simply the trajectory changing twice in flight rules out rockets and makes is pretty clear it was a directed Interceptor. But the fog of war is thick so we'll probably never really know. So sad.
Ansar Allah has targeted random ships, including Russian tankers, and, most notably, was conducting these attacks before the October 7th attacks; their advocacy for Israel is a retcon. It's worth pointing out that if Ansar Allah succeeded in liberating Palestine, their next action would be to burn down all the mosques --- Palestinians are overwhelmingly Sunni (and Hamas is an explicitly Sunni organization), and Ansar Allah is at war with Sunnis in Yemen, where it has been destroying mosques for the last year.
Which Russian tanker? One was hit carrying Russian naphtha, the Marlin Luanda, but it was not owned by Russia. AA claims it was British[0].
What ship attacks happened prior to the 7th?
> "It's worth pointing out that if Ansar Allah succeeded in liberating Palestine, their next action would be to burn down all the mosques"
No, it wouldn't. This is pure conjecture. The Sunni and Shia conflict in Yemen is far more complex than you are trying to make it sound. The Sunni Saudis have been inflicting a famine on Yemen for years. The Sunni Emiratis have been assassinating and conducting terrorism within Yemen. This is important context to leave out.
That was part of their war with the Saudi coalition. The parent was saying they were attacking random targets and only used the genocide as cover for more random attacks, when it is clear they are targeted attacks and for specific purposes. Appreciate the link.
I don't disagree with that. Actions can have many intentions. But that doesn't mean they don't oppose the genocide and are using it unscrupulously to attack ships (which the parent was implying). The majority of muslims In Yemen, regardless of sect, support Gaza and oppose the genocide. This is a good way to take a moral stand, gain public support and further legitimize their government, and be a thorn in the side of the US.
I think people sometimes need to be reminded that the Houthis are a race-supremacist religious cult (they're literally named after a guy named Houthi, who very probably saw the movie Die Hard) that employs child soldiers to ethnically cleanse Yemen in a doomed effort to restore a (literally) fascist Imamate.
Stop dignifying them. Nothing they're doing is even comparable to bringing a case before the ICJ.
Respectfully, these are the kinds of questions you'd ask if literally the only things you knew about Yemen were that the Houthis oppose Israel and were in a war with the other Arab states. You can Google any of these questions and get pages of answers.
This is the problem with campism. You're finding yourself zestfully defending an organization that has restored chattel slavery to Yemen. Why have this problem? Why go out on this limb?
The Die Hard thing --- it just blows me away that this whole movement is named not after, like, the 3rd Imam, but rather some random dude who was alive at the time Three Men and a Baby was released. He very probably had an opinion about Steve Gutenberg. I think it's important to remember that these people aren't Zaydis; they're a cult splinter group.
What did you read? I search [houthi racism] and get pages upon pages of it (unsurprisingly, given how Houthi theology works). I'm interested in a single source you've read that warmly treats the Houthi movement as legitimate. Even the founder of Believing Youth condemns them.
Fair enough. Start by reading about the history of Yemen and the last Zaydi Imamate, the Mutawakkilite Kingdom, which was overthrown in the 1960s. The Mutawakkilites operated a caste system, in which Zaydi Hashemites (people who can trace their family tree back to the 3rd Imam of Shi'ism) were considered racially superior, and black-skinned Yemenis (the search you want here is "Akhdam") were untouchables.
This whole system was abolished, and the country that hosted it (North Yemen, later the Yemen Arab Republic) was annexed into greater Yemen. Notably --- given your previous comment about the legitimacy of Houthi violence against Sunnis --- Yemen is a Sunni country (Zaydi Islam sits somewhere between Sunni and Shia Islam, and historically the Zaydis and Sunnis have gotten on reasonably well in Yemen).
The Houthi movement is named for Hussein al-Houthi. He was the son of Badreddin al-Houthi, a famous Zaydi scholar, but was not himself a cleric. The movement has two basic principles: the restoration of a Mutawakkilite-style Imamate (first in Yemen and then globally), and the marrying of Zaydi theological ideas with Khomeinism: specifically, the violent overthrow of the existing order. The Houthis are modeled on Hizbollah and trained in and supported by Iran.
If you want sourcing for Houthi treatment of Yemen's Sunni majority, you'll easily find that at the UNHCR web site.
Regarding my claim that they're a fascist movement:
* They're a mass movement led by a charismatic strong-man leader
* They have an explicit racial hierarchy
* They're xenophobic to the point of having restored chattel slavery of Africans
* They're right-wing authoritarian theocrats
* They glorify violence
* They are a reactionary response to the liberalization of Yemen that occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s, after Yemen got punished by the rest of the Arab world for supporting Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War
* They operate a cult of tradition harkening back to a centuries old Imamate that ruled the area, including notions of permanent warfare, marytrdom, and machismo.
Whether you work from Stanley Payne's definition or Umberto Eco's, the Houthi movement is an according-to-Hoyle fascist organization.
I've given specific enough details that you should be able to Google these points and find sourcing on the first search page. I recommend reading things from before 2023. Everything you'll read after 2023 is, of course, hostile to the Houthis because they're trying to spark an international crisis. But that wasn't the case before October 7th, and people were raising alarms about these people long before they decided to pretend they were helping Gaza.
Again: it is wild that people find themselves sticking up for these people. They're not anti-imperialists. They're not on your side. You do not, in fact, have to hand it to them.
As I predicted before, bringing the case before the ICJ did not stop the genocide, in fact, since the ruling was issued things have gotten significantly worse, and Israel has doubled down on their genocidal conduct. The defunding of UNWRA for example I did not see coming, but yet it happened, making quite a few nations directly complicit in genocide after the interim ruling of the ICJ.
I think we have to face the fact here that the Houthis have the moral high ground on this issue. As far as national rulers go, they are one of very few at least attempting to stop the genocide. This is not dignifying the Houthis, but rather it is a condemnation of the rest of the world.
Yes, South Africa’s case for the ICJ was strong, and did bring them into the moral high ground here. But like stated, it was not enough. More is needed, and so far western governments seem to be fine with the genocide unfolding, worsening, etc. That is disgusting.
No, they don't. Everything Israel is doing to Gazans now, the Houthis are doing themselves in Yemen. It's baffling that people can read anything about them and still support them in any way. They are themselves a genocidal movement! There's literally a Dril tweet about this.
This is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence. Israel is currently killing dozens of Palestinians every single day in direct air strikes, they keep hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced, they are starving hundreds of thousands, they target and kill aid workers trying to help those starving, they target and kill journalists trying to report on the slaughter. They lay siege to and destroy hospitals, and target and kill medical workers. They level entire neighborhoods to the ground, they destroy water infrastructure, telecommunication infrastructure, farmland, etc.
You can’t claim that the Houties are doing anything even close to this.
But this is besides the point. The Soviet Union was in a genocidal state them selves when they fought and defeated the Nazis. I will argue that they still had the moral high ground over, say, Sweden on the issue of nazism, who aided the Nazis in their genocidal war in Europe. And in fact, most of the world agreed, including the USA and the UK, who helped the Soviet Union in their effort to destroy nazism.
I can and am claiming that Ansar Allah is doing all of this in Yemen and more. The Houthis have killed an order of magnitude more people than Israel has --- which is saying something, because your opinion of Israel's actions in Gaza is not far from my own. Read up about the Siege of Taiz, which includes a deliberate starvation campaign, for a very recent example.
The term "campism" was literally coined to describe the rhetorical habit of claiming that the Soviets held some kind of moral high ground owing to their (supposed) opposition to imperialism.
Not for nothing, but the Houthis are closer to the Nazis than they are the Soviets. They're an explicitly race-supremacist movement!
I’m not finding anything about targeting of journalist, targeting of aid workers, targeting of medical workers, siege on hospitals, destruction of hospitals, mass displacement campaigns, and mass starvation campaigns. The closest I can find is the shelling of Al-Thawra hospital, and targeting of residential neighborhoods. You are either exaggerating the crimes of the Houthis or diminishing the crimes of Israel.
Look, I believe you when you say the Houthis are an explicitly racist movement with a genocidal and fascistic intent. However, the double standard in the international community when they fail to even attempt to stop (from my viewpoint) an order of magnitude worse crimes by a western aligned state. This is a surefire way of creating—what you call—campism along people like me. If the international community wanted us to stop “dignifying” the Houthis, then they need to take a better moral stance against Israel then the Houthis do.
If I was an advocate for Israel I don't think I could ask for better ammunition than to have my opposition advocating in favor of the Houthis. I think you should reconsider your take on this. But I also think we don't have much more to discuss on this point, do you?
All you're saying here is that you think Ansar Allah has good reason to attack native Yemeni Sunnis, who make up the majority of the population. I don't think defending or even mitigating the Houthi cult is an especially useful rhetorical hill to die on. Note that I didn't refer to "Sunni Emiratis". They're not blowing up mosques in the Emirates, are they?
Don't be naive. Regardless of the propaganda they might try to push, the Houthis are engaged in indiscriminate terrorism as Iranian proxies and have attacked vessels owned and operated by multiple nations regardless of links to Israel. They hit the Chinese / Panamanian tanker MV Huang Pu.
“Geoffrey S. Corn is the George R. Killam, Jr. Chair of Criminal Law and Director of the Center for Military Law and Policy, Texas Tech University School of Law and a Distinguished Fellow with the Gemunder Center for Defense Strategy (part of the Jewish Institute for National Security in America). A retired U.S. Army Judge Advocate Officer, he served as the Army's senior law of war advisor.”
Sounds unbiased, and full of integrity if he was a lawyer for the US army.
This clown is really trying to pretend Israel is doing any kind of harm reduction when it comes to civilian deaths. Wonder what that looks like when they are slaughtering civilians at aid trucks and causing a famine.
Also this so called expert is incredibly biased if you check his twitter. Hardcore Zionist. So this is just a propaganda piece.
Then when Israel continues their genocide you strip them of the munitions we supplied. If they continue then a global force can move into Israel and enforce a no fly zone and prevent further bombings.
If we don’t even take the first step of trying to stop it we are complicit and the primary reason it is ongoing.
https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/israeli-disi...