Saoudi Arabia, with the help of the United States, reduced it to rubbles. I chose not to show the pictures in this article. The videos attached show all one has to see to understand the extent of the enormous human and material damage.
If there was some justice at the Hague, both President and Prince would be tried for crime against humanity for destroying universal architectural heritage; crime for which the Tribunal has convicted an African leader. If not for crime against humanity for Yemen's mass killings.
On the market day of April 26, 1937, at the bequest of General Francisco Franco, a bombing of the Basque town of Guernica took place. It was carried out by Spain’s nationalistic government allies, the Nazi German Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion and the Fascist Italian Aviazione Legionaria.
The attack, under the code name Operation Rügen, in which hundreds of people died, became a rallying cry against the brutal killing of innocent civilians, which Pablo Picasso immortalized in the famous painting on the right.
80 years later, however, an even more criminal action is carried out against Yemeni civilians mainly by Saudi Arabia, with the complicity of the United States.
The attack, under the code name Operation Rügen, in which hundreds of people died, became a rallying cry against the brutal killing of innocent civilians, which Pablo Picasso immortalized in the famous painting on the right. 80 years later, however, an even more criminal action is carried out against Yemeni civilians mainly by Saudi Arabia, with the complicity of the United States.
The Yemeni civil war began in 2015 between two factions that claim to represent the Yemeni government. Houthi soldiers allied with forces loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, clashed with forces loyal to the government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. A coalition led by Saudi Arabia launched military operations against the Houthis, and the U.S. provided logistical and military support for the campaign.
The Houthi rebels make up almost a third of Yemen, and have ruled the country for hundreds of years. Since the beginning of the hostilities, the Houthis advance to the south of Yemen has met with the constant bombardment by Saudi Arabia and its allies, resulting in a dramatic humanitarian crisis. Thousands of people have been killed, many of them civilians, and thousands more have been forced to leave their homes and are desperately trying to find food and potable water.
Contaminated water as a result of an almost total sanitation breakdown has provoked a cholera outbreak considered the worst in history. The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported more than 815,000 suspected cases and 2,156 deaths. At the current rate of infection, experts estimate that the number of cases will reach seven figures by the end of the year. Presently, almost 20 million Yemenis –more than two-thirds of the population- do not have access to clean water and sanitation.
Since the beginning of the conflict, the emergency health-care needs of the population have been so great that health care workers are unable to provide even basic medical care. When fighting intensified in some areas, there were no formal rescue services so residents and relatives had to dig out their loved ones from the rubble of damaged buildings.
An Amnesty International report, “Yemen: The Forgotten War” describes the consequences of the attacks carried out by Saudi Arabia’s coalition: more than 4,600 civilians killed and over 8,000 injured; three million people forced out of their homes, 18.8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance including food, water, shelter, fuel and sanitation and two million children out of school.
The flow of arms however, continues, unabated. “The irresponsible and unlawful flow of arms to the warring parties in Yemen has directly contributed to civilian suffering on a massive scale,” declared James Lynch, from Amnesty International. As Iran continues its support of the Houthis’ ragtag army, reports indicate that Saudi Arabia will purchase $7 billion worth of arms from the U.S.
In the meantime, health facilities continue to be hit by bombs and health and humanitarian workers are increasingly targeted. In a scene out of Guernica, Amal Sabri, a resident of Mokha, a port city on the Red Sea coast of Yemen, described a Saudi Arabia airstrike which killed at least 63 civilians, “It was like something out of Judgment Day. Corpses and heads scattered, engulfed by fire and ashes.”
In Yemen today, world powers have not yet learned the lesson from Guernica.
INSIDE STORY: How can world leaders end Yemen's crisis?
In this moment of nuclear proliferation, resurgent Nazism, a wonderful country like Yemen being reduced to rubbles and stunning inequality around the world, Zionists have managed to find the real enemy: a children’s book. The offending title, P is for Palestine, was recently published by Golbarg Bashi and Golrokh Nafisi after a long crowdfunding campaign. Zionists have reacted as if it’s the Hamas charter.
A Palestinian friend of mine offered me the books, which I recommend you to buy for your children.
The text is an inventory of cultural and geographic objects in alphabetical format, framed by (often beautiful) illustrations. Filled with romanticized cultural imagery, it takes about five minutes to read.
In other words, it’s a typical children’s book. The only way it differs from its numerous peers in the “diversity” marketplace is that the foreign country it glamorizes is Palestine. Therefore, it is ipso facto intolerable to professional Zionist organizations.
We could just chalk up the latest iteration of Zionist anguish to a heightened sense of disquiet thanks to Israel’s steep decline in global prestige, pushed along by a burgeoning BDS movement. It helps explain the overwrought reaction to a political document written in crayon.
There is more at work, though. Something about P is for Palestine touched a nerve.
When does a children’s book get coverage in the New York Post (“Page Six,” no less), the Forward, Ha’aretz, the New York Daily News, and Breitbart?
Whenever Israel’s supporters get upset, plenty of publications are happy to amplify their grievances. That the outrage commenced immediately upon the book’s release illustrates how Palestine can abruptly create or alter a news cycle in the United States.
But something seems a bit more desperate about this gambit, almost as if a cartoon Palestine has the special ability to summon deadly serious affection. It likely has to do with the nature of the genre. Children’s books aren’t merely precious entertainment; we imagine them to be conduits for the transmission of certain values.
Ever since David Ben-Gurion’s dramatically erroneous prediction that future generations of Palestinian children would forget the Nakba, teaching and learning about Palestine has been a sore spot for Zionists (look at how the issue fares in secondary schools and universities).
Simply put, nothing threatens Israel more than the survival of Palestinian identity through successive generations, which is exactly what P is for Palestine tries to accomplish. Zionists don’t oppose its content; they oppose its mere existence as a document to historical memory. Zionists consistently express disdain for Palestinians who refuse to validate Israel. Even kuffiyehs and falafel in caricature become an existential threat.
P is for Palestine makes manifest something Zionists fear but cannot control: from Santiago to Toronto, Athens to Oslo, Abu Dhabi to Aleppo, Palestinians continue to claim and honor their ancestral land. Zionists know these transactions happen and can do nothing to stop them. The book provides an ocular target for their existential anxiety.
Israel enjoys a devastating military, an ever-growing land base, and an advanced economy, but it is afflicted by a remarkably fragile psyche. There’s no other reason for its devotees to go ballistic over a self-published children’s book. Polls repeatedly show that American Jews, youth in particular, have a declining attachment to Israel.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are united by a desire to reclaim their homeland.
Nor should we overlook the demographic for which P is for Palestine is intended. For 70 years, Israel has visited untold misery on Palestinian children. The state’s desire for ethnic purity has politicized notions of childhood in the majoritarian imagination. The book presumably transforms Palestinian kids into the type of political creatures that Zionists are obliged to hate.
Nation-states are tenuous.
Indigeneity is not.
It constantly announces itself to the forces that seek its destruction. In turn it unceasingly confers to itself the power to destroy—and it does so without weapons or without deception, but with the simple timelessness of being.
P is also for paranoia and Pettiness.
Insofar as one’s political fetish requires Palestinians to capitulate or disappear, the condition is perfectly justified.
Israelgate
While the mainstream media jumped on disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea “desperate to validate” a Russia-gate narrative, Max Blumenthal, senior writer for Alternet, discusses the “far less convenient” scrutiny now being paid to senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s Israeli connections.
Israel's racism: The persecution of African Jews
PALESTINA
While the brave Ahed Tamini is still in prison and Human Rights groups around the world are calling for her release, another member of the Tamimi family has been arrested by Israeli forces occupying the West Bank.
Muhammad Tamimi, 19, was taken prisoner during a night raid on the village of Nabi Saleh early Thursday. His father Bilal Tamini wrote in a Facebook post that Israeli forces transferred him to Petah Tikva detention center near Tel Aviv, which happens to be “the worst interrogation center in all occupation prisons, where they torture prisoners." said Manal Tamini. She, herself vas arrested on 28 December while protesting near an Israeli military prison and released after almost a week.
Abby Martin meets Ahed Tamini, a freedom fighter
Financial Times: Israel extends its high-tech barriers
Boycott!
