In the early hours of Friday 12th January (2024) UK’s Royal Navy began a bombing campaign against Yemen in partnership with USA. The campaign is an attempt to dissuade Yemen from blockading ships headed to Israel using Red Sea access to Suez Canal or to its southern coast.
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Yemen acted as a means of trying to interfere with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Its actions have not led to any casualties. Prior to the start of the bombing campaign UK government issued a false statement that claimed drones from Yemen attacked HMS Diamond, a UK ship close to Yemen. The drones did not attack the ship but were destroyed by weaponry on the ship.
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Palestinians in Gaza have received next to no help from any country. Over thirty thousand civilians, nearly half of them children, have been killed by Israeli military action. Many more are expected to be killed by bombs, by lack of water, by starvation, by lack of medical supplies and by disease, all of which are direct and deliberate tactics of Israel government’s policy. Yemen chose to help the people of Gaza by restricting flow of goods to Israel and it did so in a structured and calm manner.
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It is not surprising that USA and UK governments, both beholden to corporate control, are trying to stop interference in flow of goods to Israel. Their response to a blockade designed to protect lives was to spend millions upon millions of dollars and pounds on destroying infrastructure in Yemen with inevitable casualties.
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USA and UK governments are committed to supporting and enabling Israel’s removal of Palestinians, whether that is physical removal from Gaza or removal from living. Both countries assist Israel militarily with supply of weaponry and with surveillance flights to help with intelligence gathering. Bombing Yemen is part of that assistance but it also a demonstration that USA and UK governments value corporate income vastly higher than they value human lives. From a military perspective, Yemen’s actions against ships could be prevented without needing to bomb the country because USA and UK navies are superior in size and capability. The bombing is additional and is motivated by grotesque need to display power and capacity for violence by corporate-directed governments.
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Some reactions to the bombing campaign complained that UK government did not consult parliament and, similarly, USA government did not consult congress before the campaign began. Whether or not such consultations happened is irrelevant. The decisions would have not changed because most MPs in parliament and most members of congress would support the bombing. It would have been a pantomime and would have attached a smidgeon of false legitimacy to the resultant actions.
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USA and UK governments are, by their own admission, parties to the genocide of the people of Gaza. The governments are now taking that further by killing Yemenis as punishment for trying to interfere with the genocide. Anyone who supports Palestinians, anyone who opposes Israel’s genocidal acts, must be opposed without condition to USA and UK bombing of Yemen.
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