They have a very large base in Djibouti, directly across from Yemen and across town from the US/multi-national base at the airport.
It's going to be interesting to see how "China, who wants to the authority of a world power" starts to run up against "China, who has the responsibilities of a world power."
https://www.google.com/maps/place//@11.5906054,43.0625938,16...
And the PLAN has 25+ Type 052D destroyers w/ 64 VLS cells apiece [0]. And HQ-9 (reverse engineered Patriot SAMs) and ground attack capable YJ-18 cruise missiles in them.
They absolutely have the capability, if they weren't busy bullying their regional neighbors in the South China Sea, who have vastly less capable warships (if any blue water).
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_052D_destroyer#Armament
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/water-filled-missiles-...
The PLAN seems to be more effective and less corruption prone.
Probably why they tapped a PLAN admiral to replace the defense minister, who apparently came from the missile branch.
We will look back on the escalation of the conflict in Yemen as a strategic blunder. The Biden administration is digging itself deeper & deeper into a hole of its own making.
Really? That seems to be funny for a group that is actively promoting another kind of genocide as part of their political manifesto:
> The group's slogan reads as following: "God Is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_of_the_Houthi_movement
If you had such neighbors they might just decide to kill you if you are not of their tribe. Not sure why people would whitewash such a group of extremists.
The West things they know Islam, specifically radical Islam, better than we do, because they did two semesters worth of courses on Middle Eastern studies at their local university.
One could argue that the Shia Houthis are fighting for their independence, but there's a clear distinction between an independence war and a war calling for destroying the West. That is also a distinction between the Hamas and Fatah factions in Palestine.
I'd have thought that here of all places people would be able to differentiate between words and actions (though we can go to the founding document of Likud and statements by various politicians next, if you like).
They've been the defacto government in a large part of Yemen for a number of years, yet they haven't attacked shipping till now.
When they started they were operating using cruiser rules, they escalated to using missiles without attempting to board/warn first only after the US Navy turned up. They have largely been selective with their choice of targets, which is why the Chinese are very reluctant to get involved.
There's a good analysis of their current position in the latest episode of the Foreign Policy podcast Ones and Tooze ("The War on Global Shipping").
Funny how those people never seem to have any reservations to what hamas did, or any of the history of the past 20 yrs
> like the perpetual ethnic-cleansing
Funny you ask that, makes me wonder what happened to the jews of the levantine and arab countries
The absolute bare minimum of a position is "I'm taking the less bad side" but I think both are so awful neither honestly viable to support on a social level (political is different)
Of course not, why on earth would anyone tolerate a bunch of invaders taking over their land? Zionists are really still making that argument as if it makes a lick of sense. No sane human would react otherwise.
>Funny you ask that, makes me wonder what happened to the jews of the levantine and arab countries
What came first? Exactly, Zionists started ethnic-cleansing Palestinians and IN RESPONSE their neighbors acted in kind, which by the way was exactly what Zionists wanted anyway. They wanted and needed as many jews in occupied Palestine as possible, so it was an emotional response from their neighbors that was a moral and strategic mistake.
The point of reclaiming Zion is to ultimately reclaim Mount Temple to build the Final Temple and usher in the end of days and an eternity of paradise.
One of the strange things with Israel is a lot of people that are pro Israel dont know anything about the nation. Ignorance usually breeds hate and not love. Or maybe being darker skinned is the key.
Regardless, your narrative is false because we know exactly what the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, wrote about Zionism in great detail in his book "Der Judenstaat" and it was a colonial project from day 1. They even considered colonizing Alaska or Uganda before they decided to colonize Palestine.
There is no hasbara you could tell me that I haven't heard before in my 20 years of dealing with zionists. All of your narratives contradict each other and try to deflect from the reality that "israel" is and was a colonial project from its inception.
Noticed how little sympathy the people in Palestine get compared to people in Ukraine? Why do you think that is? If I was to say the Palestinians are Arab savages I would be reprimanded for being prejudice but making excuses for their continuing genocide isnt prejudice?
These commenters are just articulating the same venom that their parents and grandparents did, in a different way but its the same bile fundamentally. Preaching logic to hateful people that think they are superior makes as much sense in 2024 as it did in Malcolm X’s day. Dont bother trying to talk logic to people like that, they dont listen to your kind.
Thanks for clarifying. Most European Zionists, including Theodor Herzl, were and still are secular. These false post hoc narratives about religious motivations are a deflection from the real reason why Zionists wanted to colonize Palestine and it had nothing to do with religious folklore. It only became a talking point later when colonialism became a "bad word" and they were trying to legitimize their colonial project via other means.
>Noticed how little sympathy the people in Palestine get compared to people in Ukraine? Why do you think that is? If I was to say the Palestinians are Arab savages I would be reprimanded for being prejudice but making excuses for their continuing genocide isnt prejudice?
You could say that arabs or muslims are savages without facing any serious repercussions in most cases assuming that you live in Europe or America. In theory Islamophobia, like any other form of bigotry like antisemitism or homophobia, is supposedly not acceptable but in reality it is and there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for it one of which you already stated.
In reality there is an hierarchy of victimhood, where the validity and impact of different groups' experiences are often weighed and measured differently by those in positions of power or with societal influence.
The biggest irony is that the same people who are quick to shut down any form of criticism of israel, by intentionally conflating a political entity with jewish people itself, by screaming antisemitism, also engage in the most viscous Islamophobic tropes to defend their apartheid ethno-state while seeing absolutely no irony in their own bigotry. So it's obvious that it's not really about being tolerant or civilized, but rather about cleverly weaponizing narratives to reshape politics in one's own best interest.
>These commenters are just articulating the same venom that their parents and grandparents did, in a different way but its the same bile fundamentally. Preaching logic to hateful people that think they are superior makes as much sense in 2024 as it did in Malcolm X’s day. Dont bother trying to talk logic to people like that, they dont listen to your kind.
You're correct, but they are also assisted by the fact that geopolitical dynamics provide them with impunity such that their psychotic behavior compounds over time because it never gets checked and thus mutates into worse behavior over time.
Israelis/Jews ARE indigenous to Palestine. If they didn't want to live scattered amongst other peoples who regularly subjected them to pogroms, that is prerogative; It is not for me or you to judge. A substantial part of the Israelis are Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, not the Ashkenazi who are being derided as "colonialists" (although that is also quite a suspect argument).
Zionism did not exist until the late 19th century and was based in Berlin at the time england suggested splitting up the middle east.
The who “our history from God” thing is a retconn.
And the numerous attacks on the Israelis since it was formed, after each of which Israel gained more land?
And the numerous offers made to the Palestinians for a state which they refused?
For well over 100 years ago England was messing with the region. (Sykes picot)
Getting european and american nation state influence and support of genocide out of the middle east is completely appropriate.
we were attacked by 'thugs' on 9/11.
afghanistan was still a predictably disastrous war.
Anyway, hope the football game or something went well.
As for the current situation, my point was to clarify that the Houthis didn’t just randomly wake up in the morning one day and start attacking commercial ships for no reason. They communicated their reasoning and demands from the very start, and made it clear that this was their response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The US response was to simply ignore their demands and just bomb Yemen. This is a mistake. The Houthis (and Iran by proxy) are no strangers to conflict. Bombing Yemen will do nothing to stop attacks on commercial shipping - in fact, it probably will escalate them. Worse yet, starting a new conflict doesn’t help the negative reputation the US has built up over the past few months in the eyes of the so-called global south. Instead, this gives China an excellent opportunity to step in as a (actually) neutral power.
> Bombing Yemen will do nothing to stop attacks on commercial shipping
This is bully logic. It can escalate the conflict, yes, but destruction of artillery and missiles works
You might be surprised how preoccupied they are with ‘preventing’ civilian death
THESE particular bombings were because the blockade and sanctions that they did in the region and they justify with the genocide happening in Palestine.
Of course, another way you know they're full of shit is that they were shooting rockets at cargo ships in the Red Sea years before the Gaza war.
I think a pretty mainstream and reasonable way to look at Ansar Allah is:
What they say: meaningless agitprop about Palestinian liberation.
What they intend: A Zaydi Shi'a imamate with racial and bloodline governance.
What they are: A chaos agent managed by Iran in order to keep Saudi Arabia, which operates a military with one of the world's worst ratios of capacity and funding to competence, perpetually on the wrong foot.
The Houthis are not the only one blocking Maritime trade, there are also activist groups in e.g. Oakland and Tacoma which have blocked freight traffic from respective ports with the aim of disrupting shipment to Israel and the stated goal of stopping the genocide.
What the Houthis and these activist groups in America do after they’ve succeeded in stopping the genocide, that is another question which we can tackle at the time. As of now there is an emergency situation in Gaza, and we must treat it as such. Stopping the genocide is at utmost importance.
Campism is a hell of a drug.
As for effectiveness, we do know that protests do work if they are disruptive enough. But we also know that rulings by the ICJ have a tendency to be ignored if a powerful enough nation disagrees with them. Both the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Seattle are among the nations largest cities who are calling for ceasefire. Barbara Lee and Pramila Jayapal are among very few members of congress calling for ceasefire.
We will see in the days after Friday whether the actions at the ICJ were enough, and that actions against international shipping were indeed unnecessary. However, I’m gonna remain pessimistic about that.
There's a further irony to appealing jointly to the ICJ, an instrument of international law, and piracy, opposition to which is the literal original basis for all international law.
You seem to take issue with the methods the Houthis are employing, but I would like to point out that blockading international shipping is also a method which the Israelis use against Gaza. This blockade by Israel has manifested it self in direct assaults on cargo vessels and murders of their crew members (see e.g. Gaza Flotilla Raid[1]).
I think the targets of the Houthis is not the IDF directly, but rather the international community, particularly nations which are aiding and enabling Israel in the genocide, such as the USA. That the tactic here is to be disruptive enough that it won’t be worth it for these nations to support Israel in its crimes any longer. However, I’m not a member of the Houthies, so I can be wrong about that.
I recommend that you do some additional reading about the Houthis. Rasha Al Aqueedi and Nadwa Dawsari are good starting points. I think you're unlikely to find a credible reported account of Ansar Allah that is sympathetic to them.
I don’t dispute this. However by that logic, Israel has been at war with Gaza (and everyone that trades with Gaza, including Turkey) since 2008. And if we follow that logic further—which we shouldn’t—we can explain Oct. 7 as a particularly horrendous war-crime in a war full of war crimes committed by both sides, but again, we shouldn’t do that.
I also don’t dispute the irony. It most definitely is there, I just find it unimportant. On a global issue, you will always find very different groups with vastly different goals, and it just so happens that one of their goals intersect. They don’t need to be united behind that goal (and they seldomly are) but what you will see is every group has most likely very different means towards that goal.
These actions may even be counterproductive. You may believe that this is the case for the Houthi actions, I don’t, and for that we’re just going to have to disagree.
Finally I would like to note, I’m not sympathetic to the Houthies as a group, merely their stated goal of a ceasefire. I’m also of the believe that we are going to have to be way more disruptive if we are to achieve ceasefire. I believe—and I may be proven wrong about this—that the ICJ case is not gonna be enough, as any enforcement may—and I believe it will—simply be blocked by the USA.
Expect to see much more disruptive actions from all groups if (when?) the international community fails to enforce the orders from the ICJ.
Further: your logic doesn't cohere. Were Israel to blockade international shipping lanes, countries would declare war against them, as Israel did when Egypt blockaded the Tiran Straits. The discussion wouldn't be "can Israel do this"; it would be "has Israel provoked a war with another seafaring country", the way Ansar Allah has.
What you can't do is supply an analysis like "since Israel blockaded Gaza, Ansar Allah can blockade the Red Sea". Well, they can do that, but then the UK and the US will be applauded by the Security Council when they aerosolize Ansar Allah with cruise missiles.
You have repeatedly defended the actions of Ansar Allah in this discussion, most importantly by accepting their explanations at face value despite a (recent!) historic context that gives the lie to all of them, pretty bluntly and objectively. I understand you'd rather just focus on making a case against Israel, and I get why, but the reason you're conversing with me on this thread and not a supporter of Israel is that I'm not prepared to let sail by the idea that the Houthis are a legitimate actor. They are precisely the opposite of that.
This is why I think the only thing that will work are disruptions, these disruptions may include boycotts, blocking of highways, shipping, etc. divestments, etc.
I keep in perspective the urgency of stopping the genocide. And the scale of the disruptions I find justified are proportional to that urgency.
EDIT: Just to prevent this from being read wrong. I still support South Africa’s case for the ICJ. Including because the off chance their rulings will be enforced, but also because I think it will persuade more actors to pursue more disruptions, e.g. for the EU to ignore the USA and issue sanctions against Israel, for broadcasters across Europe to kick Israel out of Eurovision, etc.
If you follow the subthread back to the point where I joined it, you'll see that's been my consistent point throughout.
You need to show that the intent of Israel is to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza, even partially. What I see is the attempt of Israel to prevent more October 7 attacks, which Hamas declared it is going to repeat. The actual goal here is to protect Israel's own citizens from genocide, which Hamas has shown willingness to commit and ability (albeit in a smaller scale currently).
I think it is perfectly valid for a country to protect its own citizen from being burned alive among many other atrocities that were committed, which is also one of the reasons the genocide convention was created in the first place.
As this is war, it's also causing immense suffering in the Palestinian side. Which is why a war to remove Hamas from power was constantly deferred in the past, knowing they are highly entrenched in the civilian population. However, I don't think they left Israel any other way this time.
> I think it is perfectly valid for a country to protect its own citizen from being burned alive among many other atrocities that were committed, which is also one of the reasons the genocide convention was created in the first place.
Also wrong. The genocide convention was created to prevent genocide. There is nothing in the convention mentioning that you should not act if the victims are from other countries. On the contrary, the convention says that you must act to prevent and has an extraterritorial scope (as was established in a previous judgement in UN).
How exactly killing children, reporters, women and people holding white flags, attacking UN shelters, as well as destroying hospitals and universities prevent more October 7 attacks!? In fact, it will create more attacks because of the anger from an oppressed people. Which was the cause of October 7 attacks, by the way. Sorry, declaring war is not a free pass to commit war crimes. If the war crimes are frequent, and they are not opposed (or if they are encouraged), this is a serious evidence of genocide.
About the common western trope of “you should never fight terror because it will only bring more terror” that’s false. There is no way the palestinian population would be more radicalized, they are at the end of the spectrum. It wasn’t like there was any type of atrocity known to man on October 7 that was stopped short due to being too extreme.
Also, israel had shown that when fighting palestinians organizations in the second intifada 2001-2004, it succeeded in greatly reducing the amount of terror and achieve deradicalization
It would undermine a lot of Israel’s international support. At the end of the day, the Houthis aren’t in Gaza. Them raising random asks is orthogonal to the security threat they pose. Piracy is piracy.
Now, about those tunnels in Gaza – they're everywhere, right? But Hamas doesn't let ordinary folks use them for safety. That's pretty different from Israel, where new apartments have had to include bunkers since the 90s, and you can find bomb shelters all over the place. So, the sad truth is, the high number of civilians dying in Gaza is mainly because of how Hamas operates, using its own people as a shield.
The conflict in Yemen is an old one, and one that the US has always indirectly played a part in, given their seemingly unwavering support of the Saudis. Every power player in the region has been a part of this conflict. It's why there still is civil war in Sudan(!). It's a conflict so complex that makes the Palestinian conflict look trivial in comparison.
Targeting key enabling (e.g. radar) or missile sites will absolutely have an effect.
The Houthis have large but limited stocks of missiles, little ability to domestically manufacture, and difficulty importing more advanced models from Iran at scale.
Moving interdiction left of launch is absolutely the right call, as it leverages weaknesses in Houthi air defense to more economically blunt their launches.
Hell, the US/UK could just close the loop on foreign military aid and buy low-cost Ukrainian UAVs to attack Houthi targets.
No- you need to go further back before you see the big picture. Much as in the ancient world (which the modern world order consists of in large part), this is a Romans vs. Parthians vs. Chinese thing.
These actions are just the Parthians making access to the Silk Road harder, in the hopes that Consul Biden and the Senate and People of Rome (and the provinces they control) will stop supporting the king of Judea and his recent military invasion of the Parthian-allied settlements on his border.
>Those shipping lanes are vital, and there is only so much disruption the international order will accept before putting a decisive end to the interference.
I'll believe that as soon as the Chinese Emperor Xi commands his warships to sail out and fire their first salvos at the Parthian-supplied forces. The "international order" you think exists is literally just Rome and its provinces, and those provinces are currently busy supplying a civil war in the European Borderland (one the Romans were a major factor in creating the conditions for it to occur) and they barely contribute anything to their obligations in the North Adriatic Treaty Organization to begin with. They don't even have any legions to deploy (not that they could raise any in the first place) and won't be anywhere near decisive in a proper fight.
So that just leaves the Romans themselves... who have been engaging in proxy military action (with the king of Arabia) to remove the Parthian proxies for the past 10 years or so with very little success.
To be fair to Parthia, their main goal has always been to pull nearby provinces out of Roman orbit and into Parthia's- while Judea and Arabia might never enter the Parthian orbit unless physically conquered (organization of the Parthian-sympathetic states surrounding Judea has been a long goal of the Parthians; unfortunately for Parthia, their armies keep losing) the vassal states that depend heavily on goods traveling through the Silk Road might start to view the actions of the Judeans with disfavor.
And sure, the Romans could always just attack the Parthian proxies directly- but the entire reason that Parthia can get away with this is because the Senate and People of Rome aren't actually interested in yet another desert war that costs quadrillions of denarii, and by committing to assisting the King of Arabia secure his southern flank they lock themselves out of defending a breakaway Chinese province (whose unique products Rome arguably values even more than the loyalty of its own provinces) should the Chinese attempt to capture it, as they've long been threatening to do.
We are currently seeing a higher civilian death rate than we saw back in February 2022, yet it doesn't seem like a lot of people complained about disrupting international order when Russia was sanctioned. And they were well deserved sanctions ,it just turns out that it's not just the US or Europe that can care about civilian deaths.
Especially since those countries don't necessarily seem to care a lot about non white civilian deaths, since absolutely 0 western country condemned Israel even when they put literal war criminals like Russia to shame in terms of sheer destruction and indiscriminate murder.
When "the international community" (aka, the west) drops the ball on that regard and lets it happen for close to 4 months now, well what do they expect?
This is a false equivalence. Israel was attacked first, brutally. Russia was not attacked; theirs is a war of agression, pure and simple. It is clear that the fundamental cause of the Ukraine war is a desire by Putin and his ilk to restore the old soviet "empire". [1]
Actually, that has been the cause of many wars down through the centuries. A former power, or a country that thinks it needs to play a more powerful role in world affairs, seeking (re)ascendancy. It happened with Germany and Japan in WW2, and it is happening with Russia now. But it seems people will believe anything but what the aggressors themselves clearly want.
Do you know what the Muslim nations say among themselves, what their ultimate objective is? Without understanding that, it is impossible to place the Israeli-Arab conflict in proper perspective.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/25/putin-...
Even beyond the whatboutism in your comment, sure yeah, let's talk about how trying to restore old entities and states is a bad thing. But isn't that the whole premise of Zionism? It's literally the reasoning behind the Israel state backed settlements in the west bank. Somehow I guess Israeli colonialism is just different... because reasons. And somehow, it's not an act of aggression. Sure! And before you say that Gaza didn't have any colonies, well they didn't exactly because they have been aggressive (and it doesn't matter, Palestinians view themselves as a nation so it happening in the west bank is just as important for people living in Gaza).
The west bank stopped "being aggressive" and stopped the armed struggle and they have been rewarded with 2 decades of constant, blatant pushes for ever more settlements by literal lunatics and Israeli supremacists. All endorsed fully by the military and the Israeli state.