> 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