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Activists and former Members of the European Parliament Clare Daly and Mick Wallace return to the show a day after returning from a momentous trip to Yemen where they attended (and Mick spoke at) a Palestine Solidarity rally of over a million people. We discuss the US bombing campaign they witnessed first-hand in Yemen, the resilience of the Yemeni people, the history of terror against their people, and their attempt to block Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, which continues to be enabled by the West.

Katie Halper: Tell us what you were just doing in Yemen, what brought you there and what you observed.

Clare Daly: We're a bit overwhelmed still. We only came back yesterday. We were there on invitation at the National Conference on Solidarity with Palestine, the theme being You Are Not Alone. And this was the first time that they had international visitors in Yemen, in the midst of a US blitz. We were not disappointed, it was just from start to finish an absolutely incredible experience in terms of both the solidarity with Palestine but also the absolute resilience of the Yemeni people.

Mick Wallace: You'd struggle to find a people so determined and so united. It's hard to imagine that any state has opposed Western imperialism in quite the same way as Yemen has.

KH: Much like the situation in Gaza ‘starts on October 7’ for lots of people, what's happening in Yemen just ‘starts with the Houthis blocking ships’ and being ‘bad men’ and ‘terrorists.’ But why does Saudi Arabia, with U.S. support, want to destroy Yemen? And why did the U.N. give them permission to do so?

Mick: The Yemenis had done nothing to anybody other than the fact that [in 2011 the president] had been pushed aside and the assistant Hadi had been put in power with a program of introducing neoliberalism and facilitating Western investment and plunder. They wanted to raze the place blind and get control of yemeni assets and resources.

Yemen was one of the most self-sufficient food countries on the planet. And Hadi manufactured loans from the likes of the IMF and the World Bank with a view to changing how they did agriculture so that they would produce food for export instead of for themselves. And it was a disaster. Before long, people actually found themselves short of food. And they said no to this.

There was an insurrection and of course the insurrection wasn't to the pleasing of the West and so in March 2015 [the West] said ‘we have found it impossible to subdue these people so we'll do it the other way.’ That was with military might. It's what's normal for settler colonials, be it America, Europeans or Israel. And that's what happened. Sanctions and blockades still continue to this day. And it's an enormously difficult situation for people living there now.

KH: What do you think of the way that the Houthis [Ansar Allah] are portrayed as terrorists, given that, as you pointed out, they're actually the ones following the law when it comes to genocide?

Clare: Isn't it amazing? It's deliberately portrayed as marginal and as terrorist. But in actual fact, this government is one of very few internationally which is fulfilling its responsibility under the Geneva Convention, which says that the obligation on all signatories is not just to not commit genocide yourself, but to actively prevent and punish those who do. And the Houthi-led government in Yemen is one of the few doing that. Their actions are directly targeted at interfering with international shipping, which is on its way to enable genocide.

Meanwhile, the Israelis are targeting civilians and deliberately killing ordinary people and they're the ones enabled by the West but the Houthis are the ones who are demonized as terrorists. They've been incredibly restrained, they did not attack the ships when the ceasefire was in place and they only resumed the action when the ceasefire was broken with the implementation of the mass starvation again and targeted killing of civilians by the Israelis.

The Houthis clearly have the support of their people. We were on a march of over a million people. It happens every Friday. People come out, and bear in mind that these are now the victims of American bombings. every night, to say ‘we stand with Palestine.’

We had a meeting with the former prime minister. And he said, ‘look, it's very simple for us. We are not going to stand by. When children are being murdered and starved, we have an obligation to do something and we are going to do it.’ For us, that's heroism. That's not terrorism.

For our full interview with Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, where we discuss War in Ukraine and how the West is happy to use the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder, please subscribe to Useful Idiots. Your support keeps independent media strong.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: State Dept Blames Hamas For Israel Executing Rescue Workers

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The UN has reported that 15 medics and rescue workers from the Red Crescent were murdered “one by one” by the IDF and buried in a shallow grave. State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce was asked if this complies with international law.

“Well,” she answered, “I can tell you that for too long, Hamas has abused civilian infrastructure, cynically using it to shield themselves. Hamas’s actions have caused humanitarians to be caught in the crossfire.”

So instead of answering anything about the IDF’s actions, Bruce claims that the point blank murder (known here as ‘crossfire’) of 15 first responders is the fault of Hamas.

Interestingly, it’s also come out that Israel itself has been systematically using Palestinians as human shields. The Israeli outlet Haaretz reports it this way:

 

But when US outlet CBS News is forced to report the same story, they do it like this:

“Our CBS cameras in Gaza caught something rare: hundreds of Palestinian protesters calling not only for an end to the war with Israel, but an end to Hamas rule in Gaza as well. Throughout the war, Hamas has used Palestinian civilians as human shields. Now Debora Patta tells us there are accusations that some in the Israeli army have done it as well.”

Despite the fact that there has been zero shown evidence in a year and half of genocide that Hamas has used human shields, CBS uses this lie plus unrelated Hamas-protest news to bury the IDF story. Meanwhile, on non-corporate media, photos have surfaced of Palestinians chained to the front of IDF tanks to protect the militants inside. What could Israel do that US corporate media wouldn’t defend?

Also in this week’s Thursday Throwdown: former Disinformation Czar Nina Jankowicz shocks Katie and Aaron by actually saying something true, GOP Senator Bill Cassidy is the latest in a long line of Republicans to admit they plan to cut Medicare, and Trump’s trade war turns out to be a war against American workers.

It’s a week packed with madness, watch with Katie and Aaron so you can laugh instead of cry at it all. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here: