A trend that began with Israeli officials and has now taken hold across Western corporate media, attempting to separate Yemen’s blockade of the Red Sea from the Genocide in Gaza, is an admission of guilt. It proves that costly and ineffective US-UK aggression against Yemen is unpopular and that action in the area cannot be justified in defense of the Zionist aggression against Gaza.

“Israel” has become a pariah regime in the eyes of the vast majority of the global public, with it also losing significant support across Western nations. Knowing this, US-led military activity across West Asia, designed to protect the interests of the Zionist entity have become predictably unpopular. If one is to pay attention to the language used to describe US airstrikes across Iraq, Syria and Yemen, it is therefore apparent that a desperate attempt is being made to distance those escalatory measures from the conflict between Gaza and the Zionists.

In the case of all regional players, as part of what is known as the Axis of Resistance, each has categorically stated that their armed actions, that have been taken against American and Israeli targets, have been carried out with the specific goal of supporting the Palestinian people in Gaza. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has explicitly stated, in each communique it releases, that its attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria have been for the sake of supporting Gaza. When it comes to Hezbollah, not only has it said the same, but it has also given the title of each of its killed fighters in the ongoing battles along the northern border of occupied Palestine: “Martyr on the road to al-Quds”.

Now we come to Yemen, where the Ansarallah government based in Sanaa has consistently stated its aim is supporting the people and resistance in Gaza. Mass rallies in support of Palestine, consisting of hundreds of thousands, sometimes upwards of a million Yemenis, take place on a near weekly basis in Sanaa. It was in response to such an overwhelming demand from the people of Yemen, that Ansarallah announced its first actions against the Israeli regime.

On October 19 the Yemeni armed forces conducted a series of drone and missile strikes towards the Israeli-occupied port, known as "Eilat Port". Around a month later, in mid-November, Ansarallah’s naval forces then boarded and seized a shipping vessel off the coast of Yemen that was heading toward occupied Palestine. The seizure of the vessel was even carried out with a helicopter which was draped in the Palestinian flag and it was announced, shortly after the operation was successfully conducted, that no Israeli-linked ship would pass through the Red Sea. 

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Later, Yemen’s armed forces announced that this ban on shipping would extend to all vessels attempting to reach Eilat Port, effectively imposing a complete blockade on the Zionist entity from the South. The Ansarallah movement made it abundantly clear at that time that it would end the blockade only when the people of Gaza are freed from the conditions of starvation imposed upon them by the blocking of aid and siege imposed by the Zionist entity.

Instead of reacting to this decision, which was tantamount to a humanitarian intervention in order to prevent the Zionist entity from carrying out genocide against the people of Gaza, the US decided to continue to allow the Israelis to block aid into besieged Gaza. It quickly became apparent that the Zionists were going to suffer great economic costs from the intervention of Yemen’s armed forces, as roughly 10 billion USD in cargo was being blocked from reaching them per day. Activity in the Israeli-operated "Eilat" port also dropped by roughly 85%.

Watching “Tel Aviv” take an economic hit, Washington decided it was time to take action. Instead of putting an end to the genocide in Gaza, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, announced on December 18 that they were launching the multi-national “Operation Prosperity Guardian” (OIR) in the Red Sea. Failing to get any support from Arab nations, with the exception of Bahrain, the transnational naval coalition that was ushered into the Red Sea area was effectively a European invading force without any legitimacy under international law. Despite a later United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution passing to condemn what they called “the Houthis” [a term used to delegitimize the Ansarallah government], no UNSC resolution called for militarizing the Red Sea.

On December 29, after the repeated failures of the OIR naval coalition to allow the passage of ships to reach the Zionist regime, the US launched missile attacks on three Yemeni ships, killing 10 sailors. Up until that point, Ansarallah had not used lethal force and refrained from killing anyone during its blockade. Yemen retaliated, again without killing anyone, while continuing to successfully prevent traffic to Eilat Port.

The US and UK then decided to launch a joint attack against mainland Yemen, striking major cities like Hodeidah and Sanaa, with over 100 precision-guided missiles. This then sparked retaliatory measures from Ansarallah which led to the killing of two US navy sailors. Yemen also announced that the blockade would then be extended to US and UK vessels, which began to also affect trade through the Suez Canal. Since that time, the US and UK have repeatedly launched airstrikes throughout Yemeni territory, attempting to pull off operations to allow the passage of ships to reach the Zionist entity and have adopted an even more militaristic tone.

So far, the US and its allies have been utterly humiliated by Yemen, who have pulled off the first-ever blockade of this nature without a deep-water navy. This massively costly naval operation, which has now extended into an air campaign against Yemen, has completely failed and is only serving to attempt to protect Israeli interests. The answer to stopping the blockade is simple: end the war on Gaza and all the ships will pass. Instead, the US has chosen to designate Ansarallah as a terrorist group and to continue the embarrassing, useless and costly escalation.

Attempts in the Western corporate media, particularly broadcast media, to depict this as a global shipping crisis that is separate from the issue of “Israel” committing genocide in Gaza is ridiculous and fails to hold up to the factual record. It is also an admission of guilt, that this aggressive military intervention is costing taxpayers for no reason other than to try and help the Zionist entity massacre majority women and children in Gaza. Yemen’s blockade is a humanitarian intervention that is designed to help save the people of Gaza from the same horrors they endured under the brutal US-Saudi blockade imposed on them.