Khader Adnan seized by Israeli occupation forces, launches immediate hunger strike
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network- December 11, 2017
Prominent Palestinian leader, organizer and former prisoner and hunger-striker Khader Adnan was seized on Monday morning, 11 December, by Israeli occupation forces at his home in Arraba, Jenin. He immediately launched an open hunger strike to demand his release.
Randa Moussa, his wife, told Palestine Today that he had announced an immediate strike on food, drink and speech after his arrest. She said that four patrols, an armored troop carrier and a jeep surrounded their home at 2:30 am and invaded the home violently, trying to break down the door of the home, and that they hit Adnan on the back and hand, throwing him on the ground before handcuffing him. He was then interrogated in a closed room of the house before being taken away to an undisclosed location.
Adnan, prominent political activist from the town of Arraba near Jenin, has been arrested 10 times and spent six years in Israeli prison, all in administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial. In 2012 and 2015, he carried out 66-day and 56-day hunger strikes, respectively, winning his liberation from arbitrary Israeli imprisonment.
The Islamic Jihad movement said in a statement that “the arrest of leaders and popular and national symbols will not weaken our people or break their will…. this is a desperate attempt to suppress the uprising of Jerusalem,” as Palestinians inside and outside Palestine have risen up against US President Donald Trump’s declaration that Jerusalem is the “capital of Israel” in the eyes of the US.
Khader Adnan is a Palestinian and international symbol of steadfastness within the prisons who has inspired widespread international solidarity. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network demands the immediate release of Khader Adnan and will announce further actions as we receive more news and information from Palestine on Adnan’s detention. The struggle for the freedom of Palestinian political prisoners is at the forefront of the struggle to defend Jerusalem and liberate Palestine.
Catholic University of Leuven announces it will not continue participation in LAW-TRAIN
Photo: Pour la Palestine, Facebook
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – December 7, 2017
Following a wide campaign by a faculty action group, student organizers and a variety of community organizations, the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium (KULeuven) announced that it will not continue future participation in the LAW-TRAIN project, a joint cooperation program with the Israeli police to study interrogation techniques, funded by the EU under the Horizon 2020 program.
Newly elected KULeuven rector Luc Sels released a statement on Wednesday, 6 December stating that no follow-up projects will be pursued in the future, because “The Israeli Ministry of Public Security’s participation does indeed pose an ethical problem in view of the role played by this strong arm of the Israeli government in enforcing an unlawful occupation of the Palestinian territories and the associated repression of the Palestinian population.” While the statement commits to continue the current project until the end of April 2018, it also calls for the creation of a human rights charter to govern the assessment of future proposed projects to avoid such situations.
This is the latest achievement of the international campaign against LAW-TRAIN. The project seeks to develop software to simulate interrogations in a hypothetical international drug trafficking case. The involvement of the Israeli police, headquartered in occupied Jerusalem and including the Border Police that regularly enforce occupation against Palestinians, engage in mass arrests and killings of Palestinians, and are an integral part of the occupation security forces, has sparked resistance to the program in several countries, among activists, scholars and lawyers who note that the program produces a European license for Israeli torture and abuse.
The Israeli police are also known for the use of torture during interrogation as well as the arrest, interrogation and violation of the human rights of Palestinian children. The Israeli police and Tel Aviv University are partners in the project with the Belgian federal police and prosecutor’s office as well as KULeuven and the Spanish Guardia Civil.
Earlier, Portugal was also a partner in the project, but pulled out citing budgetary issues after an extensive and successful campaign by Portuguese and Palestinian organizations highlighting the project’s clear links to human rights violations and the torture and imprisonment of Palestinians. Over 40 Belgian organizations – including Samidoun – joined the campaign to stop LAW-TRAIN, working hand in hand with a campaign on the university’s campus to bring an end to the project and future such collaborations.
Thousands of Belgians signed a petition to stop LAW-TRAIN, while on the university’s campus, dozens of academics participated in protests and appeals, including an intervention in the annual opening academic procession by gowned professors who presented the rector with a cake and the petition signatures. The Leuven academics’ working group on Palestine led campaigns within the University on scholarly and human rights grounds, and the LAW-TRAIN issue was made a significant one on campus, including leading up to the election of Sels as the university’s new rector earlier in 2017.
Students on campus joined with faculty to hold campus protests, including a street theater action highlighting the realities of interrogation and the human rights abuses of the Israeli police. LAW-TRAIN was a major focus of Israeli Apartheid Week 2017 on Belgian campuses, which highlighted the situation of Palestinian prisoners and featured a number of talks and presentations by French-Palestinian lawyer and former political prisoner Salah Hamouri, currently jailed once more without charge or trial by the Israeli occupation.
Protests in Leuven, Charleroi and elsewhere highlighted LAW-TRAIN as human rights experts urged not only the university but also the Belgian Ministry of Justice to immediately pull out of the program. A delegation of Belgian lawyers and human rights scholars traveled to Palestine to investigate torture by the Israeli police and published an open letter upon their return, urging Belgium to withdraw from the project. In addition, hundreds of Belgian academics and cultural workers joined an open letter organized by BACBI, the Belgian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, calling on the government to “withdraw the Belgian Ministry of Justice from this highly contentious project. Such a withdrawal would signal to the Israeli politicians that Europe, and especially Belgium, will no longer tolerate the misdemeanors of their order and security forces against the Palestinian population.”
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network congratulates the Leuven faculty and students and all organizations that have worked on this campaign in achieving this important step from KULeuven. We redouble our call upon the Belgian ministry of justice, federal prosecutor’s office, and police, as well as the Spanish Guardia Civil, to immediately withdraw from this project and to the European Union to end its funding of such programs in collaboration with the Israeli occupation and its security forces. Such programs are an attempt to legitimize the very forces that daily carry out repression, torture and colonization and maintain apartheid and occupation against the Palestinian people. Participation in or funding of LAW-TRAIN or similar programs means direct complicity in the torture and imprisonment of Palestinians. It is long past time to hold the Israeli state accountable and subject it to boycott, divestment and sanctions for its flagrant, decades-long violations of fundamental Palestinian rights, rather than provide it with funding and support that allows it to continue its deadly and devastating attacks on the Palestinian people and their rights with impunity.
Imprisoned Human Rights Defender in Military Court
International Solidarity Movement | December 6, 2017
Tomorrow, Abdullah Abu Rahmah will be taken once again in front of a military judge. He is being accused of “Causing damage to a military installation,” referring to Israel’s illegal Annexation barrier built on his village’s land.
Abdullah stated, “The occupation has used many methods including killing, injuring, and raiding our homes in order to stop us from exercising our right to protest and struggle against the occupation. But we will not stop struggling until the occupation is dismantled.”
Abdullah, a leading non-violent activist and human rights defender has has been held in military prison since the occupation forces raided his village, Bil’in, and took him from his home in the middle of the night on the 19th of November, 2017. Abdullah was handcuffed, gagged and his hands were tied to the roof of the jeep. Since then, two military judges have conceded that Abdullah is not dangerous and should be released on certain conditions, but the military prosecution is intent on making sure he remains in detention, and has continued to hold him without regard to due process. Tomorrow’s hearing will be to determine if Abdullah has broken conditions set for his release by a military judge after his arrest from the Alwada Cycling Marathon on Nakba Day, the 13th of May, 2016.
Abdullah has been arrested and injured many times in the past for his role in promoting non-violent creative protest in his own village of Bil’in and across the West bank. In 2010, Abdallah served 16 months in prison after being convicted on charges of “incitement” and “organizing and participating in an illegal demonstration.” Abdullah continued to advocate for nonviolent action and Human rights from prison.
In addition to Abdullah, 16 year old Ahmad Abu Rahmah, as well as Ashraf Abu Rahmah, another prominent Bil’in activist, were also taken and are still being held by the military. Ahmad Abu Rahmah was arrested with Abdullah in the raid and accused of throwing stones, as was Ashraf, following his arrest on the 14th of November 2017. Ashraf’s two siblings, Basem and Jawaher, were both killed in separate incidents while nonviolently protesting the illegal wall constructed on their land.
Three Palestinian lawyers seized by Israeli occupation
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – December 4, 2107
Israeli occupation forces seized three Palestinian lawyers well-known for their involvement in defending Palestinian human rights and particularly the rights of Palestinian prisoners in armed, overnight, pre-dawn raids. The three lawyers are:
- Khaled Zabarqa, seized from his home in Lydd in Palestine ’48 and a defense lawyer for imprisoned Sheikh Raed Salah
- Iyad Misk, seized from his home in Kufr Aqab in Jerusalem and legal director of the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission
- Firas al-Sabbah, seized from his home in the city of Jerusalem and director of the al-Meethaq Foundation for Human Rights
All three of the lawyers’ homes was stormed at night by police and intelligence agents who ransacked the home before taking him. The three were taken to the Petah Tikva interrogation center.
Zabarqa is one of the most prominent lawyers defending Palestinian political detainees and prisoners in occupied Palestine ’48. Most recently, his advocacy on behalf of imprisoned Sheikh Raed Salah has highlighted the sheikh’s solitary confinement and political targeting. Zabarqa has been targeted in the past, barred from entering Jerusalem in 2015. Misk is also the former legal director for Defence for Children International – Palestine and, as current director of legal work for the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, has a leading role in defending many Palestinian prisoners before Israeli occupation courts.
Al-Sabbah is the director of al-Meethaq Foundation, which offers public legal services to the Jerusalemite population, including dealing with Israeli occupation entities like insurance officials, the municipality, and the interior department. The foundation also works together with Physicians for Human Rights to document abuses against child prisoners and support parents in filing complaints about their children’s treatment.
The targeting of the three lawyers comes hand in hand with the ongoing attacks on Palestinian human rights defenders such as Salah Hamouri, new Palestinian lawyer and field researcher for Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association; Hasan Safadi, Arabic-language media coordinator for Addameer; Issa Amro, al-Khalil organizer against settlements; Khalida Jarrar, Palestinian parliamentarian and Addameer board member; Abdallah Abu Rahma, coordinator of Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements.
“Human rights defender” is a term used to describe people who, individually or with others, act peacefully to promote or protect human rights. These three Palestinian lawyers are human rights defenders who serve as a first line of defense for Palestinian civilians under occupation targeted for arrest, detention and persecution by Israeli occupation forces.
This is also a specific and targeted attack on Palestinian legal work and Palestinian lawyers, in what appears to be an attempt to deprive Palestinian prisoners of even the barest legal representation which is in and of itself frequently barred from providing any meaningful defense in a colonial system meant merely to legitimize the ongoing detention of Palestinians. It also appears to be an attempt to intimidate and suppress Palestinian lawyers from engaging public work to defend Palestinian political prisoners and people under attack.
It’s time the international community stood up for Palestinian children
A Palestinian child can be being arrested by Israeli security forces [Saeed Qaq/Apaimages]
By Professor Kamel Hawwash | MEMO | December 4, 2107
Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian children is not a new development but rather one example of its many breaches of international law and international humanitarian law. While it has in the past faced criticisms for its maltreatment of Palestinian children, particularly in relation to minors that are taken into custody and brought before its military courts, this has not been matched with solid action.
It is therefore encouraging that this may be about to change, and in the United States of all places. The Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act requires the Secretary of State to certify annually that funds obligated or expended in the previous year by the United States for assistance to Israel “do not support military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children, and for other purposes”. The legislation leaves financial assistance already committed to Israel in place.
The bill notes that Israel ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 3 October 1991, which states— (A) in article 37(a), that “no child shall be subject to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. It states that “In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, there are two separate legal systems, with Israeli military law imposed on Palestinians and Israeli civilian law applied to Israeli settlers”.
It further notes that the Israeli military detains around 500 to 700 Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 17 each year and prosecutes them before a military court system which the bill says “lacks basic and fundamental guarantees of due process in violation of international standards”.
Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP) notes that “Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes an estimated 500 to 700 children each year in military courts that lack fundamental fair trial rights and protections”. It further states that in 590 cases documented by DCIP between 2012 and 2016, 72 per cent of Palestinian child detainees reported physical violence and 66 per cent faced verbal abuse and humiliation.
According to Khaled Quzmar, General Director of DCIP, “despite ongoing engagement with UN bodies and repeated calls to abide by international law, Israeli military and police continue night arrests, physical violence, coercion, and threats against Palestinian children”.
The recent introduction of the bill in the US Congress aims to prevent US tax dollars from paying for human rights violations against Palestinian children during the course of Israeli military detention. It aims to establish, as a minimum safeguard, a US demand for basic due process rights for and an absolute prohibition against torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested and prosecuted within the Israeli military court system.
In 2012 the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office commissioned a report by nine lawyers on the issue of Palestinian children. Among its conclusions it found that “Israel is in breach of articles 2 (discrimination), 3 (child’s best interests), 37(b) (premature resort to detention), (c) (non-separation from adults) and (d) (prompt access to lawyers) and 40 (use of shackles) 111 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child”. It further concluded that based on its findings “Israel will also be in breach of the prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in article 37(a) of the Convention. Transportation of child prisoners into Israel is in breach of article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Failure to translate Military Order 1676 from Hebrew is a violation of article 65 of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
The report made four core recommendations and 40 specific recommendations. The sheer volume of the recommendations highlights the extent of the breaches that need to be addressed by the Israeli authorities. Rather than work to address the recommendations of the report in 2016, Israel refused to cooperate with a team making a follow-up visit to review the extent to which the recommendations had been addressed. This led to the cancelation of the visit and the British FCO failed to convince the Israelis to reinstate it.
Responding to a question from the Chair of the Britain-Palestine All Party Parliamentary Group, then Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood said: “I expressed my strong disappointment at Israel’s unwillingness to host this follow-up visit with Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely during my visit to Israel on 18 February. Officials from the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, including the ambassador, also lobbied the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs to cooperate with the visit, and will continue to follow up. We remain committed to working with Israel to secure improvements to the practices surrounding children in detention in Israel.”
The UK parliament has recently been considering the issue of Palestinian children and their treatment by Israel. This was initially expressed through a parliamentary instrument called the Early Day Motion (EDM). EDM 563 was issued on 20 November and states that “this House notes with concern that hundreds of Palestinian children continue to be arrested, detained and tried in Israeli military courts, despite the practice involving widespread and systematic violations of international law and being widely condemned”.
The motion “notes the disparity between the treatment of Israeli and Palestinian children by Israeli authorities and calls for those authorities to treat Palestinian children in a way that is not inferior to the way they would any Israeli child”.
EDM 563 notes with concern “that the recommendations of Unicef’s 2013 Children in Israeli Military Detention Report remain largely unmet and calls on the government to urgently engage with the Israeli government to end the widespread and systemic human rights violations suffered by Palestinian children in Israeli military custody”.
At the time of writing 65 members of parliament had signed the motion (out of 650). This includes support from individual MPs from all political parties in England Scotland and Wales.
The recent moves in Congress and the UK parliament to highlight Israel’s abuse of the rights of Palestinian children have been welcomed by Palestinians and their supporters. It has taken decades for the rights of children to gain any real attention. If the bill in the US passes then it would signal a real change in policy in that it will condition some funding to Israel on respect for human rights and specifically for Palestinian children. If it fails then the message to Palestinian children will be that America is willing for the bar to be set lower for them than for Israeli children. A well supported EDM in the UK Parliament will highlight the issue and that will allow its sponsors to seek real action from government to pressure Israel to change its unacceptable treatment of Palestinian children, both morally and legally.
It is time Palestinian children were finally protected from abuse by their occupiers. Israel is comfortable in its abuse and will only change when the international community acts to help them. As for Israel, a state without a moral compass, when it comes to Palestinians it could at least apply the same law and practices of dealing with Palestinian children as it does its own children.
Israel law allows prosecution of those revealing army violations against Palestinians
MEMO | December 4, 2017
Israeli media sources revealed that the Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislation was due to discuss a draft bill yesterday that allows the army to sue anyone who “offends” its soldiers.
The bill, which is aimed at organisations including Breaking the Silence which works to expose the occupation’s violations against Palestinian citizens, has the backing of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Minister Yariv Levin, Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom reported.
According to the bill’s details, the draft law would allow soldiers to file defamation suits against anyone who tried to harm their reputation or spread information harmful to their image.
The newspaper quoted Likud MK Yoav Kish, who presented the draft bill, saying: “After the Ministerial Committee approves the draft bill, it will be presented next Wednesday for approval during a preliminary reading in the Knesset.”
Kish claimed that the “testimonies” published by Breaking the Silence are “lies”.
He added: “Whoever defames the army, whether it is Break the Silence, or any other party, must pay the price.”
Breaking the Silence is an organisation of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and who expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories.
The death of Atef al Maqousi
Israel-Palestine Timeline
November 8, 2017: Atef al-Maqousi, 37, died from complications resulting from serious wounds he suffered in 1992, after Israeli soldiers shot him in his spine. Atef was 12 years old.
Atef suffered from quadriplegia as a result of his injury, when the soldiers shot him with live fire in Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Following the shooting, Atef suffered ongoing infections and repeated serious complications that eventually led to his death, medical source said.
To see a list of all Palestinians and Israelis killed by the other side since 2000, go to Israel-Palestine Timeline.
Hamas asks PA government to fulfill its duties or resign
Palestine Information Center – December 2, 2107
GAZA – Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, on Saturday urged the Palestinian Authority (PA) government to fully assume its responsibilities, including lifting the unjust sanctions on the Gazan people, or resign and form a national salvation government.
The Movement said in a press statement that the PA government, led by Rami Hamdallah, was handed over all Gaza ministries yet it has not exerted any single effort to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians people in Gaza and miserably failed in implementing the agreements reached in Cairo.
Hamas accused the PA government of fighting against the resistance and stressed that it has not made any serious step to confront the Israeli Judaization and settlement schemes and defend the Palestinian people in Occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank.
This is the first time that Hamas has openly asked Hamdallah’s government to resign. The request came in response to the government’s procrastination in lifting the sanctions imposed on the Gaza Strip despite having taken over all government institutions in the enclave under Egyptian and international supervision.
PA officials demand that the PA government be fully “empowered” as a condition for lifting sanctions. Palestinian factions and observers see this term as unrealistic, especially that lifting the sanctions was earlier linked to dissolving the administrative committee and handing over Gaza ministries and crossings.
The sanctions imposed on Gaza, which include reducing power and medical supplies and cutting the salaries of PA employees, are still in place despite the reconciliation talks. The humanitarian situation in the territory, meanwhile, keeps worsening in view of the 11-year Israeli blockade.
Argentine ‘death flight’ pilots get life for 100s of junta opponents thrown into ocean
Images of junta victims at ESMA Museum in Buenos Aires © espaciomemoria / YouTube
RT | November 30, 2017
Judges in Argentina have given life sentences to the former ‘death flights’ pilots after hundreds of people opposing the country’s 1976-83 military junta – including a close friend of Pope Francis – were thrown into the ocean.
A major ruling on Wednesday marked the “first” such Argentinian judgment against pilots involved in the notorious ‘death flights,’ local media reports. During the operations, opponents of Argentina’s military regime that ruled the country from 1976 until 1983 were thrown into the waters of the Atlantic.
According to the verdict, the announcement of which lasted almost four hours, 29 former service members were sentenced to life imprisonment, 19 were sentenced to eight to 25 years, and six were acquitted, local media report.
There are 54 defendants in the major trial. It also involves cases of 789 victims of a secret detention center – known as the Navy Mechanics Higher School (ESMA) – where up to 5,000 people opposing the repressive junta regime are believed to have been vanished.
The five-year trial – called the ‘mega cause’ in Argentina – exposed the chilling practices of systematic torture and the killing of thousands of people, including left-wing opponents of the regime and members of Argentina’s urban guerrilla groups, but also human rights activists and relatives of those forcibly disappeared by junta forces.
In a series of hearings, it emerged that numerous victims were drugged, loaded onto ‘death flight’ aircraft, and thrown into the freezing waters of the southern Atlantic Ocean. Among ESMA victims was Esther Careaga, a close friend of Jorge Bergoglio, who later became Pope Francis. Careaga was thrown to her death from a plane one night in December 1977, along with two French nuns and nine others.
“Careaga was a good friend and a great woman,” Beroglio said when the body was identified in 2003. The future pontiff met Careaga, a biochemist and his boss at the time, when he worked as an apprentice at a pharmaceutical laboratory in Buenos Aires in the early 1950s.
Former Palestinian prisoner Omar Nazzal publishing new book
Photo: Omar Nazzal (l)
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – November 23, 2017
Palestinian journalist and former prisoner Omar Nazzal has written a new book, “Between Sarajevo and Etzion,” published by Dar Fafasat under the auspices of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commission. The book includes images and stories from Nazzal’s time in administrative detention in 2016; he was imprisoned for 10 months through hunger strikes and protests within the prison after being seized by Israeli occupation forces as he traveled to attend the European Federation of Journalists’ conference in Sarajevo.
The arrest of Nazzal, a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and President of the Association of Democratic Journalists, sparked international protest, yet his imprisonment without charge or trial was renewed on multiple occasions. He was previously jailed in 1978 and 1988 and held in administrative detention without charge or trial; in 1986, Nazzal was held under house arrest for six months.
Issa Qaraqe, head of the Prisoners Affairs Commission, said that the book exemplifies the prisoners’ resistance to all attempts to destroy their will, spirit and national identity. A launch for the book will take place in Ramallah on Sunday, 26 November.
The US-Saudi Starvation Blockade
By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • November 24, 2017
Our aim is to “starve the whole population — men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound — into submission,” said First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill.
He was speaking of Germany at the outset of the Great War of 1914-1918. Americans denounced as inhumane this starvation blockade that would eventually take the lives of a million German civilians.
Yet when we went to war in 1917, a U.S. admiral told British Prime Minister Lloyd George, “You will find that it will take us only two months to become as great criminals as you are.”
After the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, however, the starvation blockade was not lifted until Germany capitulated to all Allied demands in the Treaty of Versailles.
As late as March 1919, four months after the Germans laid down their arms, Churchill arose in Parliament to exult, “We are enforcing the blockade with rigor, and Germany is very near starvation.”
So grave were conditions in Germany that Gen. Sir Herbert Plumer protested to Lloyd George in Paris that morale among his troops on the Rhine was sinking from seeing “hordes of skinny and bloated children pawing over the offal from British cantonments.”
The starvation blockade was a war crime and a crime against humanity. But the horrors of the Second World War made people forget this milestone on the Western road to barbarism.
A comparable crime is being committed today against the poorest people in the Arab world — and with the complicity of the United States.
Saudi Arabia, which attacked and invaded Yemen in 2015 after Houthi rebels dumped over a pro-Saudi regime in Sanaa and overran much of the country, has imposed a land, sea and air blockade, after the Houthis fired a missile at Riyadh this month that was shot down.
The Saudis say it was an Iranian missile, fired with the aid of Hezbollah, and an “act of war” against the kingdom. The Houthis admit to firing the missile, but all three deny Iran and Hezbollah had any role.
Whatever the facts of the attack, what the Saudis, with U.S. support, are doing today with this total blockade of that impoverished country appears to be both inhumane and indefensible.
Almost 90 percent of Yemen’s food, fuel and medicine is imported, and these imports are being cut off. The largest cities under Houthi control, the port of Hodaida and Sanaa, the capital, have lost access to drinking water because the fuel needed to purify the water is not there.
Thousands have died of cholera. Hundreds of thousands are at risk. Children are in danger from a diphtheria epidemic. Critical drugs and medicines have stopped coming in, a death sentence for diabetics and cancer patients.
If airfields and ports under Houthi control are not allowed to open and the necessities of life and humanitarian aid are not allowed to flow in, the Yemenis face famine and starvation.
What did these people do to deserve this? What did they do to us that we would assist the Saudis in doing this to them?
The Houthis are not al-Qaida or ISIS. Those are Sunni terrorist groups, and the Houthis detest them.
Is this now the American way of war? Are we Americans, this Thanksgiving and Christmas, prepared to collude in a human rights catastrophe that will engender a hatred of us among generations of Yemeni and stain the name of our country?
Saudis argue that the specter of starvation will turn the Yemeni people against the rebels and force the Houthi to submit. But what if the policy fails. What if the Houthis, who have held the northern half of the country for more than two years, do not yield? What then?
Are we willing to play passive observer as thousands and then tens of thousands of innocent civilians — the old, sick, weak, and infants and toddlers first — die from a starvation blockade supported by the mighty United States of America?
Without U.S. targeting and refueling, Saudi planes could not attack the Houthis effectively and Riyadh could not win this war. But when did Congress authorize this war on a nation that never attacked us?
President Obama first approved U.S. support for the Saudi war effort. President Trump has continued the Obama policy, and the war in Yemen has now become his war, and his human rights catastrophe.
Yemen today is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis on earth, and America’s role in it is undeniable and indispensable.
If the United States were to tell Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that we were no longer going to support his war in Yemen, the Saudis would have to accept the reality that they have lost this war.
Indeed, given Riyadh’s failure in the Syria civil war, its failure to discipline rebellious Qatar, its stalemated war and human rights disaster in Yemen, Trump might take a hard second look at the Sunni monarchy that is the pillar of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf.
Copyright 2017 Creators.com
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