The Yemeni Naval Forces managed to capture an Israeli ship in the depths of the Red Sea.
Reportedly, 52 people aboard the Israeli ship, presumably a vehicle carrier, were detained, Al Mayadeen's sources added, revealing that the Yemeni Armed Forces were working on revealing their identities and nationalities.
"Await what will warm your hearts," a Yemeni military source said, confirming.
Commenting on the situation, the Yemeni Armed Forces said they would release a statement on the matter within a few hours.
"It seems that the ship captured by the Yemenis is owned by Israeli businessman Rami Ungar," Israeli media said in the wake of the incident. "The ship was carrying vehicles, as it was making its way from a port in southern Turkey to a port in Western India."
An Israeli occupation forces spokesperson described the event as "a very dangerous development."
Ansar Allah threatened and fulfilled its threats against "Israel", Israeli media said.
Earlier on Sunday, Ansar Allah spokesperson Yahya Saree said the army would target all ships owned or operated by Israeli companies or ones bearing the Israeli flag, calling on countries to withdraw their citizens operating on such ships.
مشاهد للعملية العسكرية النوعية للقوات البحرية اليمنية على السفينة الإسرائيلية والسيطرة عليها واقتيادها إلى الساحل اليمني - 19-11-2023م pic.twitter.com/xukot1li7g
This month Saudi Arabia tightened a stranglehold on the neighboring
country of Yemen and 7 million people face starvation. The Saudi
blockade is an escalation in Yemen's civil war. The United Nations says
the war has now become a "man-made catastrophe." You've seen very little
of this because the Saudis prevent reporters from reaching the war
zone. Recently, we were ordered off a ship headed to Yemen. Days later
the Saudis gave us permission to fly there but, after our equipment was
loaded and our boarding passes issued, the Saudis closed the airspace so
the plane couldn't take off. Even so, we have managed to get pictures out of Yemen
to show you what the Saudi government does not want you to see. This
will be hard to watch, but 27 million people in Yemen pray you will not
turn away.
A child in Yemen
Hungry
children cry. But there are no tears at the limits of starvation.
Wasting bodies cannot afford them. This is the Al Sabeen Hospital in the
Yemeni city of Sana'a. Ibtisam is two and a half. She weighs 15 pounds.
Haifa is seven. She weighs 11 pounds. The images, and stories from the
hospital, were sent to us by people that we hired inside Yemen. One
child dies every ten minutes in the country according to the U.N..
David Beasley runs the World Food Programme, the U.N.'s emergency first responder to prevent famine.
David Beasley: It's just desperation and death. It is as bad as it gets. I don't know if I've ever seen a movie this bad.
Scott
Pelley: We were headed into Yemen with the World Food Programme, the
Saudis gave us permission to come, and then when we arrived they
wouldn't let us into the country. What do you think they didn't want us
to see?
David Beasley: I don't understand why they won't allow the
world to see what's taking place. Because I think if the world sees the
tragedy of this human sufferin', number one, the world will step up and
provide the support financially for innocent children to eat. But when
you get on the ground and see what I see, you see is chaos, is
starvation, is hunger, and it's unnecessary conflict strictly man-made.
All parties involved in this conflict have their hands guilty, the hands
are dirty. All parties.
"We're
on the brink of famine. If we don't receive the monies that we need in
the next few months, I would say 125,000 little girls and boys will
die."
In essence, the fight is between the two main branches of
Islam. The Shia branch occupies much of the West, the Sunnis most of the
South and East. Saudi Arabia, leader of the Sunni world, began
airstrikes against Shia rebels, more than two years ago. The rebels, who
are known as Houthis, are supported by Saudi Arabia's arch enemy, Iran,
the leader of the Shia world.
Houthi rebels have plenty of blood
on their hands, including the deaths of 1,000 civilians. But the U.N.
says the Saudi coalition has killed more than 3,000 civilians; bombing
schools, hospitals and Al Kubra hall, scene of a funeral last year. 132
Civilians were killed, nearly 700 wounded. Still, the deadliest weapon
in Yemen is a blockade holding up food, fuel and medical aid.
David Beasley: We can't get our ships in. They get blocked
Scott Pelley: Who blocks the ports?
David Beasley: The Saudi coalition.
David
Beasley told us the Saudis bombed the cranes that unload ships. The
U.S. sent replacement cranes. But the Saudis won't let them in.
David
Beasley: We ask any, any parties engaged in this conflict to respect
humanitarian law, respect the rights of innocent people and give us the
access that we need to provide the help that's needed.
Scott Pelley: It sounds like the Saudis are using starvation as a weapon.
David
Beasley: I don't think there's any question the Saudi-led coalition,
along with the Houthis and all of those involved, are using food as a
weapon of war. And it's disgraceful.
A child in Yemen
The
U.N. World Food Programmer is the largest humanitarian aid agency. The
U.S. is its biggest donor, so the director is most often an American.
Beasley was once governor of South Carolina.
David Beasley: We're
on the brink of famine. If we don't receive the monies that we need in
the next few months, I would say 125,000 little girls and boys will die.
We've been able to avert famine, but we know three things that are
happenin'. We know that people are dying. We know that people are
wasting. And we know that children are stunting. We have a stunting rate
in Yemen now at almost 50 percent. That means they're smaller, the
brains are smaller, the body's smaller because they're not getting the
food or the nutrition they need.
The World Food Programme's
Stephen Anderson is trying to move millions of pounds of food to Yemen
from an African port in Djibouti.
Stephen Anderson: The World Food
Programme is mobilizing food for seven million people. Now what that
looks like is a 110-pound bag of wheat flour. We're aiming to provide
two million of those every month to the people of Yemen.
Scott Pelley: How long can you keep that up?
Stephen
Anderson: Well, we're desperately praying for peace. Because that's the
only sustainable way of really rebuilding the situation our stated
objective is to try to prevent a famine from occurring.
Stephen Anderson distributes food
CBS News
While
facing imminent famine, the people of Yemen are also suffering one of
the biggest cholera epidemics in history. Nearly a million have been
infected with the bacteria which inflicts diarrhea, dehydration and
sometimes death. The disease thrives in dirty water. And water treatment
and sanitation have collapsed in Yemen's cities.
Nevio Zagaria heads the World Health Organization's emergency response.
Scott Pelley: What do you have to have to stop the epidemic?
Nevio
Zagaria: We should have peace. This is what we need to stop this
epidemic. So we cannot solve the problem of cholera if we do not have a
proper safe water supply, if we do not have proper sanitation. If we do
not have the sewage treatment plant in the main town functioning and
stop because it runs out of fuel as it happened at the beginning of this
epidemic in the north of Sana'a for three or four months.
Scott Pelley: The main sewage plant in Sana'a ran out of fuel and didn't run for three or four months?
Nevio Zagaria: Yes. So 3 million people, huh?
About
two million Yemenis have been forced from their homes by the war and
there's been a big exodus of refugees that the world doesn't know very
much about.Many of them have come 25 miles across the Red Sea to a refugee camp in the African nation of Djibouti. It is a testament to how bad things are in Yemen that the refugees believe that this place is so much better.
We've
seen a few refugee camps in our time but this may be the most desolate
with a drought of life and flood of sun. One worker told us we were
smart to come in fall when it cooled off to 110.
Scott Pelley: How long have you been here?
Ali Shafick: Unfortunately 28 months.
Ali
Shafick was once an architect in the Yemeni capital. His home was
destroyed. He's alone here. And his despair was almost like madness.
Ali Shafick: To be jobless in this camp is very sad. The time is going slowly, very slowly.
Scott Pelley: The heat must be unbearable.
Ali
Shafick: Heat? Yes, boiling. Starting from June, July and August. Three
months. You cannot live, you cannot live here, three months. It's
impossible to live.
Scott Pelley: And yet you do.
Ali Shafick: I have to be patient. I have to be patient.
Djibouti refugee camp
CBS News
This mother, Ameena Saleh, told us her family left after Saudi led airstrikes killed more than 70 people in her town.
The
planes would fly above us and fire rockets and missiles she told us. At
night there was no sleep, they were holding the young ones. She said
that her older son was saying 'we are going to die.' She told us we saw
people die right in front of us.
Scott Pelley: A little while ago we heard a rumble from the direction of Yemen. That's the bombing, isn't it?
Yes, her husband said, it's near.
Scott Pelley: What do you think when you hear that?
Strong fear, she said. She said the terror is still inside us from the rockets, missiles and planes.
Ayman Gharaibeh runs Yemeni refugee relief for the U.N..
Scott Pelley: What lies ahead for these people, given where we are today?
Ayman
Gharaibeh: Remember, the conflict is going into a third year, some
people has been displaced for literally three years or going into their
third year. I honestly do not see any silver lining anywhere on the
horizon that this is gonna end soon. And I'm afraid the humanitarian
situation will continue to deteriorate. And we would go from a
displacement to a famine, as happened, to cholera, and God knows what's
next.
"All the children are gonna be dead. It's terrible."
The
Saudi intervention in Yemen began with the rise of 32-year-old Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he's the son of the king and he's the
defense minister. Salman is quickly reforming the kingdom's
fundamentalist society. Recently, he lifted the ban on women drivers.
This month, he arrested 200 Saudis including princes and media owners.
He says it's a crackdown on corruption. His critics believe he's
silencing his rivals. Salman's campaign in Yemen has now landed Saudi
Arabia, for the first time, on the U.N.'s blacklist of nations that
disregard the safety of children in war.
The Saudis have pledged
$8 billion in humanitarian aid for Yemen, but they've delivered very
little of that. The head of the Saudi humanitarian agency says that its
aid to Yemen is, quote, "way beyond any damage caused by any attacks."
Scott Pelley: You met with some government officials involved in all of this, what kind of dialogue did you have with them?
David
Beasley: Well we met with officials on all sides. They said all the
right things. And we come back, everything that they agreed to on visas
and access, so that we can get the equipment we need in, so we can
deliver the food where we need to deliver it, and the technology and the
health product -- you know -- terrible. The conditions are
deteriorating in an unprecedented way and none of the commitments that
were made, by any and all sides, have been fulfilled.
Scott Pelley: What future do you see for Yemen?
David
Beasley: I don't see a light at the end of this tunnel. There's gotta
be a big change. As the World Food Program, I've got my mandate to feed
people. But also as a U.N. leader, I call upon the leaders of the world
to bring the pressure to bear whatever's necessary to get the Saudi-led
coalition, the Houthis and all involved to the table and end this thing.
You keep goin' like you're goin', there's not gonna be anybody left.
All the children are gonna be dead. It's terrible. Produced by Nicole Young and Katie Kerbstat
UNICEF warns that Yemen’s children are paying the heaviest price for living life in a war zone
A child in Yemen dies every 10 minutes as
humanitarian aid funding falls short, U.N. says
AND NO ONE CARE ABOUT YEMEN
--------------
The future has never been so bleak for the children of Yemen. Images from the past few months show a country teetering on the brink of famine.
As the conflict enters its third year this week, the UN children’s agency says the youngest and most vulnerable are paying the heaviest price.
According to UNICEF’s latest estimates one child dies every 10 minutes from preventable causes like malnutrition, diarrhoea and respiratory tract infections.
Attacks on hospitals and clinics have risen by a third, leaving the health system on the verge of collapse.
While attacks on schools have more than quadrupled in the last year, forcing thousands to stay away from the classroom.
Future generations caught up in the fighting between Iranian-backed rebels and the Saudi-led coalition are at great risk, if no solution is found to the conflict
Answering an urgent question in the Commons, defence minister Philip Dunne said the UK had ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2010 and no longer supplied, manufactured or supported them.
He said there had been several conflicts in that region in the past decade so it was not clear that the evidence found had come from the current fighting.
Shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry asked whether the Saudi military had used British planes to drop cluster bombs and what was the extent of British involvement in the conflict.
Mr Dunne replied: "I can categorically reassure [you] that no British planes have been involved in this coalition effort at all, let alone in dropping cluster munitions - that is the potential allegation. There is no British involvement in the coalition in targeting or weaponising aircraft to undertake missions."
'Nasty weapon'
Amnesty has written to Prime Minister David Cameron calling for a government inquiry into the allegations.
The human rights group claimed it found a partially-exploded BL-755 cluster bomb which had apparently malfunctioned, leaving scores of unexploded bomblets strewn over a wide area near a farm in Al-khadhra village, six miles from the Saudi border.
Amnesty said the bomb was originally manufactured by Bedfordshire company Hunting Engineering Ltd in the 1970s.
Amnesty International UK arms control director Oliver Sprague said: "Cluster bombs are one of the nastiest weapons in the history of warfare, rightly banned by more than 100 countries, so it's truly shocking that a British cluster munition has been dropped on a civilian area in Yemen."
Cluster bombs explained
The Convention on Cluster Munitions prohibits all use, stockpiling, production and transfer of cluster bombs
The convention has 108 signatories and became binding international law in 2010
Cluster bombs pose particular risks to civilians because they release many small bomblets over a wide area
During attacks, they are prone to indiscriminate effects especially in populated areas
Unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians long after a conflict has ended, and are costly to locate and remove
Source: United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs
A Saudi-led coalition of Arab air forces began carrying out airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen last year.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that at least 3,200 civilians have been killed and 5,700 wounded, with 60% of the casualties caused by airstrikes, in that time.
The conflict between President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi's UN-recognised government and the rebels began in September 2014
Buying a SIM card for your phone in Yemen entails giving a copy of the picture page and visa stamp of your passport to the store-owner which he presumably passes along to the appropriate authorities, and filling out an application form which must be stamped with your left thumbprint. A phone call is then made to some mysterious entity and only then do you get your cellphone number. One assumes in these disturbing times, that the Yemeni government wants to keep tabs on who’s who. (It is interesting to note which countries keep close tabs on such things. In Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria you pay cash and trundle off with the new SIM and phone number, nary a piece of paperwork in sight. In Tunisia, Libya and Yemen your passport is required and recorded. I cannot quite find the common thread there.....) The good news is that the SIM card and a charge card costs the grand total of $12. Email is also very cheap here at 50 cents an hour (100 Yemeni Riyals) for relatively fast connection, with internet cafes everywhere in the major cities.
A view of Old Sana'a from the rooftop of one of the city's many samsarahs.
Sana’a has a long history. It is said to have been founded by Shem, son of Noah. Arabs are descended from Shem, hence the term Semitic......Arabs, like their Jewish brethren, are a Semitic people - a little known fact, especially in the US where the term ‘Semitic’ has come to be associated exclusively with Jews - an absurd, but by now well-established, nonsense.
Yemenis or South Arabians, are often considered to be ‘pure’ Arabs, being descended from Qahtan, (associated with Joktan a descendant of Shem, in the book of Genesis), while ‘northern Arabians’ are descended from Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar. (Adnan, who was mentioned in an earlier post as father of north Arabians, is a descendant of Ishmael.) The term ‘Arab’ seems to have been recorded in written records for the first time in Assyrian texts dating back to 853BC. There may be frequent reference to lineage in the coming posts and this is because it is extremely important in Bedouin or 'pure' Arab culture. But as Ibn Battuta would say, "but we will talk of this later."
Like other areas of the Arabian peninsula, Christianity was well established in Yemen by the mid-4th century but the last Himyarite King, Dhu Nuwas, who ruled from 495-525AD converted to Judaism and began to persecute Christians, culminating in the massacre of the entire Christian population of Najran, now in SW Saudi Arabia. The Byzantines, both affronted and powerless, asked their fellow Christian Ethiopians to attack Yemen to protect the remnants of the Christians, which they did under the Axumite General, Abraha. He destroyed the Himyarite regime and installed himself as ruler, but the Yemenis asked the Persians for help in ousting the Ethiopians, and by 575AD they were installed as governors.
Another view of the unique and magnificent architecture of the old City of Sana'a
Judaism has lengthy roots in Yemen and although it is not known exactly when it was established, it is assumed that after the destruction of the Temple in 70AD, some Jews made their way south to Yemen. Until 1948, there was a strong Jewish community but today the numbers are reduced to only a few hundred, mainly in the north in Sa’ada. Christianity did not fare so well - one of the reasons it did not take root long enough to survive in depth the coming of Islam, was the Byzantine Church’s heavy handedness in dealing with what it considered its heretical elements, i.e. the monotheistic creed that was embraced by many of the Eastern churches. When the Muslims marched out of Arabia into neighboring lands not requiring - indeed initially not even wanting - their subjects to convert, paradoxically many elected not only to live under Muslim rule which was more benign than that of Constantinople, but to convert. (The benefit of conversion was exemption from the tax that all non-Muslims paid.)
But back to present-day Sana’a. The open-air medieval souk is the heart of old Sana’a. Now called Souk al-Milh, or Salt Souk, this name used to refer only to the segment of the souk designated for that trade - in years gone by 40 trades were conducted in the souk.
Creating some small metal part the old-fashioned way - no protective clothing in sight...
Nowadays you can still find metalworkers, jambiya makers, carpenters and potters at work in their tiny shops while in the retail section of the souk are spices, dates, tobacco, coffee, tea, perfumes, incense, silver, jambiyyas and embroidered belts, basketry, jewelry, textiles, and household items. In former times goods arrived on camelback to a samsarah or khan where they were bought from local merchants - some of those samsarahs have been converted into art galleries although a few are still used for storage.
Jambiya - the curved dagger no self-respecting Yemeni would step outside his home without.
As for the tower houses of old Sana’a, the most iconic in the country is in Wadi Dahr, Beit al-Hajjar. Located on a limestone outcrop north of the capital it was originally built in the 18th century but was renovated in the 1930s as a summer residence for Imam Yahya. It is still used by the government for official functions.
It has all the components of a traditional tower house; several storeys of gypsum-traced windows, extravagant colored glass qamariyya windows, and shubaq, the protruding encased window ledge used for keeping meat and dairy products cool in the days before refrigeration.
The most famous house in Yemen - Beit al-Hajjar in Wadi Dahr, near the capital.
I had been hospitably entertained in a tower house in the old City currently being rented by a friend - all five storeys of it. Now I was about to go off into the wilds of Yemen with Abdullah Khawlani, driver and trusted friend. It promised to be memorable... Abdullah does not speak much English, although he understands far more than he lets on, and my Arabic is execrable especially when I have to translate pages of text relating to the 14th century, text that dwells on matters most sensible people have long ago left off thinking about. Back on the trail of Ibn Battuta who landed in northern Yemen by boat, I am doing no such thing - I am traveling in a Land Cruiser from Sana’a. But first I had to visit the pharmacy - it is the rainy season, albeit the short one, and as I am going to be spending some time on the coast where the climate is noxious at the best of times and mosquitoes abound, a dose of malaria would be tiresome even if Sana’a does have some perfectly good hospitals now. In Yemen as in many Middle Eastern countries, you can buy most drugs over the counter for a fraction of the cost you pay at home, so here's to $2 Larium and hypnotic dreams......
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh looks down protectively over his flock at Bab Yemen, principal gate of the Old City.
THAT YOU WELL NEVER THE ANY MEDIA WELL SHOW WHAT AL SAUD KEELING THE YEMENIS EVERY HOUR
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(al-Ahed News) ~ About a week ago, Saudi warplanes committed a terrible massacre against a group of Yemeni fishermen on the Island of A’qban in the Province of al-Hadida, killing around 150 fishermen.
#اوقفوا_قتل_الصيادين مجزرة صيادين الخوخة إلى قائمة مجازر الساحل الغربي .. والنوايا تكشفت لماذا ؟http://yalmashhad.com/news/2418
Posted by المشهد اليمني الاول on Thursday, 19 November 2015
#اوقفوا_قتل_الصيادينال سعود المجرمون..لا يمضي يوم إلا ويقتلون المستضعفين في يمن الإيمان والحكمة.كل يوم شهداء كل يوم جر...
Posted by محمد ابو المجد on Thursday, 19 November 2015
The above couple are a Jewish couple from Yemen, a place where most people wouldn’t think there would exist a historic Jewish population because well, Yemen is considered an ‘Arab country’ and most of the world always identifies the term ‘Arab’ and the religion of Islam. These Jews call themselves ‘Yehudei teiman’, and many of them aren’t even in Yemen anymore. Between 1949 and 1950, the greater majority of the Yemeni Jews were airlifted to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet, which is one of the many airlifts used by Israel to bring back Jewish populations to Israel. According to tradition, there is 2 ways they could’ve gotten to Yemen:
They are simply followers of the Judaism brought back by the Queen of Sheba, Bilqis, upon her return from Jerusalem.
That with the prophet Jeremiah some 75,000 Jews came to Yemen, 42 years before the destruction of the Temple of Solomon by the Babylonians. (Basically around 545 BC)
While they may just be a mix of both scenarios, it is well known that they are in fact a population with an ancestral tie to the ancient Israelite people, and they are carriers of the Kohanim Marker distinctive of Jewish populations. The Yemeni Jews have a very distinct identity from other Jewish populations for a number of reasons. For one, their form of Hebrew, Yemeni Hebrew, is considered the most accurate modern day form of Biblical Hebrew. Second, they do have their own unique traditions including the marriage traditions as pictured above. The Yemeni Jews aren’t simply some recent phenomenon, it is known that at one point they had power in Yemen. During the 5th and 6th century, they had power over the kingdom of Himyar. In fact the Himyarite King deposed by Negus Kaleb of Aksum was in fact a Jewish man named Yusuf As'ar Yath'ar, who’s Jewish mother was possibly of Mesopotamian origin. The Yemeni Jews of our day in Yemen face an uncertain future, they’re mainly centered around the capital Sana'a, which is currently in Houthi control. The Yemeni Jews have no real say in Yemen, and are as vulnerable as the very structures holding together Yemen as a country
Dubai (AFP) - The Saudi-led coalition bombing rebels in Yemen has been using US-supplied cluster munitions in its air campaign, Human Rights Watch said Sunday, warning of the long-term dangers to civilians.
The widely banned bombs contain dozens of submunitions, which sometimes do not explode, becoming de facto landmines that can kill or maim long after they were dropped.
Washington defended its transfers of cluster munitions, saying they were subjected to stringent requirements.
"Recipients of such transfers must commit that cluster munitions will only be used against clearly defined military targets and will not be used where civilians are known to be present or in areas normally inhabited by civilians," a US Defense Department official told AFP.
"This is obviously a critical element of the policy."
HRW said it had gathered photographs, video and other evidence indicating that cluster munitions had been used in coalition air strikes against the Huthi rebel stronghold of Saada province in Yemen's northern mountains in recent weeks.
It said that analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the weapons had landed on a cultivated plateau, within 600 metres (yards) of populated areas.
