Tim Anderson
Source: Al Mayadeen English
Tim Anderson argues that recognizing the struggles of the Yemeni and Palestinian peoples is a moral obligation for independent nations, calling for international support against Western-backed oppression.
This moral imperative is an obligation on the free peoples of the world, those with a conscience, and particularly on large independent nations – like Russia, China, Venezuela and Iran – to recognize and support the struggles of the Yemeni and Palestinian peoples, abandoned and oppressed for decades, and whom the imperial powers claim do not exist, are illegitimate people or “terrorists”, even as they defend their lands and communities from imperial terrorism.
The Yemeni people launched a war of independence against the US and its proxies, mainly Arab monarchies from the Persian Gulf, in a dirty war which persisted for many years, but which the Yemeni people won, only to be abused as “Houthi rebels” by the UN Security Council, and held under an extensive UN backed blockade, leading to what was called, before the Gaza genocide, “the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.”
These Yemenis are not simply “rebels” they constitute the only legitimate government in Yemen for the past decade. This Ansar Allah-led coalition government, based in Sanaa, has been managing a state since 2015 for more than 70% of the population, while the “recognized” regime is a comprador exile group based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Just as the people of Venezuela cannot tolerate an outside appointed, self-proclaimed “president” like Juan Guaido or Edmundo Gonzalez so the Yemeni people cannot be expected to accept an exile regime based in Saudi Arabia as their government.
The international community knows little of the Yemeni people. Better known are the Palestinian people, who have waged an eight-decade struggle against the Israeli settler colonial regime, have been subject to ethnic cleansing, periodic massacres and, over the past two years, to a genocidal onslaught in Gaza.
The world sat back and watched Gaza in horror, but few did anything, except for the Yemeni people and the Hezbollah-led resistance in Lebanon. The Yemeni people confronted the Israeli criminals directly, blocking shipping to prevent supply to the genocidal regime, in accordance with their obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Which other state complied with its obligations under the Genocide Convention?
The free peoples of the world should join with the Yemeni and the Palestinian people and not side with the US and Israeli criminals. We should also expose the Israeli crimes against the people of Yemen and Palestine, as well as the Anglo-American providers of bombs and other weapons used to slaughter those peoples.
We are not powerless, we can do something by recognizing the Sanaa government in Yemen and recognizing a Single Democratic State in Palestine, not the ridiculous “two-state” illusion that has been held out for so many years. Apartheid in Palestine must be dismantled, that is an obligation under international law, as lawyers Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley pointed out in a report for the UN, years ago.
Just as the South Africans rejected a backwards “homeland” proposal in the 1980s, so we should reject this outdated “two state” myth for Apartheid "Israel"-Palestine. The South African apartheid regime tried to present “Bantustan” enclaves as some form of ‘self-determination’, but this was rejected both by black South Africans and the United Nations. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said tribal enclaves had nothing to do with the South African reality. The Bantustan policy and practice aimed at reinforcing apartheid by forcing the majority black African population into 13% of the country’s land, with few resources and basic services.
The first Trump administration tried to sell a very similar idea in 2020; seeking to preserve the land theft by 140 settlements and 600,000 Israeli settlers across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This plan was rejected by all Palestinian factions.
Just as Russia says it cannot live alongside a Neo-Nazi Ukraine which aims at the destruction of the Russian people and their culture, so the Palestinian people can’t be expected to live alongside a colonial regime committed to their extermination. The colonizers should be made to accept equal citizenship for all, or leave.
We must break the blockade imposed on the peoples of Yemen and Palestine, a blockade of information, of culture – including attempts to ban communications with and support for these people – and then also the economic and military blockades.
Back in 2014-2015, as the Yemeni revolution was taking place, Washington managed to convince the UN Security Council to designate Ansar Allah (“Houthi rebels”) as a destabilizing terrorist force, despite the fact that they were fighting US- and Saudi-backed Al Qaeda groups in the Arabian Peninsula. The independent states at the UNSC seem to have been asleep. This gave apparent UN legitimacy to the terrible war and siege on Yemen.
Ansar Allah is the only Arab and Muslim resistance group to be proscribed by the UNSC; neither the Lebanese Resistance party Hezbollah (part of the Lebanese government for most of the past two decades) nor any of the Palestinian factions (Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the others) are so listed at the UN. They are just unilaterally branded as “terrorist” by Washington and its allies. We should pay more attention to the distinction between international and unilateral designations.
Yet even Washington accepts UNSC designated terrorist groups as a new government, when it suits, as we have seen with the HTS/Al-Qaeda takeover of Damascus in late 2024. HTS has no revolutionary or democratic mandate, it simply took over when the besieged Syrian Arab Army collapsed; yet Western and comprador Arab regimes rushed to normalize with new “interim president” Jolani aka Ahmed al Sharaa, because HTS forces had deposed the independent Assad government, which was allied to Iran and had been providing material support to the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance.
If Washington can do this with designated terrorists, why should not the independent nations of the world recognize the decent and long-suffering Yemeni and Palestinian peoples?
An additional reason the Anglo-Americans give for not recognizing Ansar Allah and listing it as “terrorist” is its operations against Red Sea shipping supply to the Israeli regime since the outbreak of the Gaza Genocide in October 2023. However, the Ansar Allah-led Sanaa government responded that its operations are not only justified against the Israeli criminals and its accomplices, but an obligation under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which indeed cites the need to move against those engaged in “complicity in genocide” (Article III).
In all these circumstances, not least the poorly considered and punitive UNSC resolutions against Yemen and attempts to prohibit all support for the Palestinian Resistance, it is important that a civil society dialogue opens up with the people of Yemen and Palestine, despite the attempts to ban such links; and that large, independent and counter-weight nations like Russia, China, Venezuela and Iran move to recognize these peoples at a national level.
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