Yemen’s solidarity with Palestine

The bourgeois press is filled with a constant drum beat of Israeli destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians — many of them children — inflicting great economic hardship on the Palestinians living in Jerusalem and the West Bank and of Israel’s ability to conduct a major air raid against the Yemeni port of Hodeida, 1,600 miles away from Israel.

All this and more is with the diplomatic and financial blessing of the United States, which just gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the honor of addressing a joint session of the U. S. Congress to present Israel’s great victories.

The image that all this media coverage and Netanyahu’s speech is meant to present is that Palestine is not only beset but that it is also isolated, with just a few countries like Russia, China and Iran as allies.

But as part of an ongoing, weekly series of demonstrations, the organization, Ansar Allah, an armed Yemeni resistance group, called Houthi by U.S. and other bourgeois media, organized pro-Palestinian protests in more than 100 different locations in Yemen on June 8. There were 21 demonstrations in Saada, 25 in Al-Mahwit, 22 in Raymah, 25 in Hodeidah and 22 in Ibb. [Ansar Allah is part of the Axis of Resistance.]

Since Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East and North Africa region and suffers from the economic impacts of the war in Ukraine and high fuel prices, most demonstrations in Yemen are designed so that the people attending them can walk to the demonstration site.

When Ansar Allah called a demonstration in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, a few million people participated.

Not just demonstrations

Ansar Aallah has been using their location on the Red Sea to conduct an armed struggle against ships connected to Israel to physically support the Palestinians as well as politically supporting them.

Beyond the attacks on shipping, Ansar Allah has used drones to reach Israel. While the vaunted U.S.-Israeli Iron Dome air defense system has limited the effect of Yemen’s efforts, Ansar Allah has kept on trying. On July 19, a new drone got through Iron Dome, carrying explosives that damaged some buildings in Tel Aviv and came close to hitting a U.S. diplomatic facility.

In response to this successful drone attack, which caused a panic in Israel, there was a major Israeli air raid on Hodeidah July 20. Hodeidah is Yemen’s major port on the Red Sea and has a lot of facilities to handle food donated through the World Food Program. Over half the families in Yemen, particularly in its northern region, are food insecure.

Ansar Allah attacks on shipping in the Red Sea as well as the Gulf of Aden have been very effective. Two ships have been sunk since last November and 90 ships have been attacked by missiles or drones. About a trillion dollars worth of goods — around 15% of the world’s merchandise — move through the Red Sea.

The U.S. Navy deployed the Eisenhower aircraft group with about 7,000 sailors to protect shipping, along with some British and French ships. According to interviews available on YouTube, done when the USS Eisenhower returned home, the fighting with Ansar Allah drones was intense. Planes from the aircraft carrier used hundreds of missiles to take out the drones, which were armed with their own missiles.

Ansar Allah also started using small, fast boats loaded with explosives as drones. They were particularly hard to stop. According to the World Bank, tolls on the Suez Canal have fallen to half of what they were before the Ansar Allah offensive. Ships now go around Africa, which adds significantly to the cost and is a major drag on the world’s economy.  But the militants’ actions are carried out to pressure Israel to end its siege of Gaza and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.