The Houthis chant “death to Jews” as they hold a starving country hostage. Calls for unilateral ceasefire serve only our guilt, not the Yemeni people.
It is quite a feat to prove oneself as anti-Semitic than the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The regime in Tehran has proudly threatened the state of Israel with total obliteration for many decades.
Its state-run broadcaster Press TV, which employed our Right Honourable Leader of the Opposition as a renowned host for many years, is championed domestically as a beacon of investigate reporting, for its scoop that the holocaust was “the greatest lie ever told”.
But the Ayatollah’s have usually preferred to restrict their aggression to the state of Israel, rather than the Jewish population at large. Not so the Ansar Allah (Houthi) rebels in Yemen, Iran’s primary proxy force in the Arabian Peninsula.
Last month students in the Yemeni capital Sana’a were handed new ID cards for the upcoming academic year with a boldly revamped layout; gone were the colourful designs, in was the inscribed slogan: “Death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam.”
Similar phases have been uttered publicly at all levels of the Houthi leadership, and across their various social media channels.
The rebels, which represent a small minority tribe in the north of the country, launched a violent coup against the government in 2015 and occupied the majority of the country with help from Iranian weaponry.
The group was pushed back from the Southern coast when an Arab Coalition intervened at the request of the government and UN security council, but has managed to cling on to the country’s main port and capital city, against the wishes of those in residence.
In the past three years it has diverted and extorted aid shipments, recruited hundreds of child soldiers, laid thousands of landmines, and overseen a severe deterioration of the humanitarian situation within its occupied territories.
Late last week, Head of the World Food Programme David Beasley expressed his horror at discovering active Houthi landmines in grain depots.
So far, the Houthis have failed to show up for any official peace talks sponsored by the United Nations, most recently in September this year.
The Houthi’s campaigns have brought the leadership immense wealth and power; most now live in palaces and parade the streets of Sana’a as warrior kings, no matter how unloved.
The war economy works for the Houthis – as long as they continue to hold the strategic port of Hodeidah, through which 70% of the country’s imports travel, they will be able to finance their war efforts and lifestyles through extortion of aid and fuel.
The Houthis know that the humanitarian situation in their lands has become so dire that any peace settlement will eventually lead to exclusion from the political process and some form of national vengeance.
They also know quite how much the Saudi-led Coalition is under attack for its campaign, and they are inclined to let the situation deteriorate in the hope that the Saudis are forced out by the international community.
Such a scenario appears increasingly likely. Calls for a ceasefire have grown louder, with both the United States and UK calling for an end to hostilities, the latter tabling a UN Security Council resolution earlier this week.
These were quickly supported by European governments and members of the press. Saudi Arabia’s Western allies currently provide a significant amount of intelligence and advisory support to the Coalition, particular in its quest to eradicate Al Qaeda from Southern Yemen, but it seems the mood has changed. The West appears ready to try to force an early Coalition exit from the conflict.
This would be an abdication of responsibility, and a mistake.
The Civil War will not end if the Coalition leaves – it is primarily fought by Yemenis who care too much about the future of their country.
The conditions which led to war, namely the refusal by a majority of the country to be governed by Houthi invaders, will not have been addressed.
The Coalition has prevented an attack on Hodeidah for over a year, if it withdrew then the Yemeni resistance forces would immediately advance and the conflict would enter its bloodiest phase yet.
More importantly, an Iranian proxy would govern unopposed vast swathes of territory on Saudi Arabia’s Southern border, in a Hezbollah-type state of perpetual aggression.
Calls for a ceasefire play directly into Houthi hands. If the Saudis defy it – the international pressure on them will mount. If the Saudis do nothing, then the Houthis will have no incentive to negotiate.
The Coalition has clearly been pushed into action by their western allies and is trying to quickly force a situation in which the Houthis are sufficiently weakened to desire talks. However, there would be a faster way to get them to the table: back the Coalition and threaten the Houthis with concerted military action if it refuses to negotiate.
They want to drive a wedge between the Saudis and their Western allies, but faced with a unified opposition they would have no choice except to surrender Hodeidah at the very least.
This is where British courage is needed.
The Houthis are an evil group which grows stronger with every condemnation we make of their opposition – it is not in our character to appease such a threat; there is an opportunity to end the conflict quickly, and we would betray this former protectorate if we let them make all the hard choices alone.
Ross Thomson is the Conservative MP for Aberdeen South