Moral imperative: Recognise Yemen and Palestine

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.

Just shedding tears for those undergoing tremendous humanitarian crises is meaningless unless we also recognize and support those peoples. For this reason, there is a moral imperative to recognize the Yemeni and Palestinian people, closely linked Arab and Muslim peoples who have struggled for decades against outside plans to divide, exterminate and steal their lands and resources.

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.

https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/opinion/moral-imperative–recognise-yemen-and-palestine