Tag Archives: Palestine

A Year of War

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In early March, the new IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said that 2025 would be “a year of war.” After intensifying the war against Hamas and ongoing fighting with Iran’s five other arms that surround it like a ring of fire (plus the Iran-run international propaganda campaign on campuses and streets throughout the world) Israel has begun its long delayed massive assault on the head of the octopus—or septopus to be exact—itself. Israel has at last brought the fight to the monster’s head. Zamir’s words were true. The words he said today were also true: “This is a critical operation to prevent an existential threat, by an enemy who is intent on destroying us…. We are at the point of no return.”

This is the largest-ever Israeli attack on the genocidal Iranian tyranny, and it has only just begun. After two years of war the “ring of fire” has been sputtering as Israel has decimated Hamas, neutralized Hezbollah, ended Iran’s control of Syria, and severely damaged the other Iranian tentacles, reshaping the Middle East for the better, but now it is time for the last, largest reshaping: neutralization of Iran as the reigning head of the region, with or without regime change, with or without a residue of nuclear capability.

The Israeli pager and walkie-talkie operation against Hezbollah, followed by systematic decapitation of its hierarchy, was likely the cleverest military subterfuge since the Trojan Horse. But it was followed in a number of months by Ukraine’s brilliant infiltration of Russia with hidden armaments that destroyed half of that dictatorship’s military aircraft in a day. And a few weeks late Israel’s vast, brilliant, multilevel, game-changing assault on Iran began yesterday. Brains, not brawn, shattered these three modern tyrannies, each far more deserving of destruction than Troy.

Not so Gaza, where Israel’s unpreparedness for Hamas and Qatar’s own trickery put the boot on the other foot and forced Israel to fall back on sheer power—that is, ordinary war. That is not an oxymoron. It is a plain fact. Ordinary. War.

The photo shows the Modern War Institute at West Point, where John Spencer serves as the chair of urban warfare studies and a founding member of both the Institute and the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare. He served 25 years in the army in ranks from private to sergeant first class and second lieutenant to major. In two combat deployments to Iraq he served as an infantry platoon leader and company commander. He is the author of three books and many articles on urban warfare and leadership. And he’s a prize-winning West Point teacher.

Given his expertise, it’s not surprising that he has closely followed and taught about Israel’s war since October 7, 2023. He has visited Gaza several times and (among many other articles and interviews) wrote in late April a remarkable piece called “Top 7 Lies about Israel and the IDF Pertaining to  Gaza.” Here they are.

“1. Lie: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza; 2. Lie: Israel intentionally targets civilians in Gaza; 3. Lie: The civilian-to-combatant ratio proves Israel is committing war crimes. 4. Lie: Israel is starving Gaza’s population; 5. Lie: Israel indiscriminately attacks hospitals and schools; 6. Lie: Israel is illegally occupying Gaza; 7. Lie: Israel violates Hamas prisoners’ rights under the Geneva Conventions.” In each of these sections Spencer provides not just persuasive but decisive evidence that those who perpetrate these bald-faced falsehoods are morally bankrupt deceivers. He concludes, “In a just world, Israel’s efforts would be recognized for what they are: the very definition of lawful and moral warfare.” This is what he is teaching America’s future officers right now at West Point: Israel is a military and moral model for our own future wars.

Or, consider Richard Kemp, a retired British Army Colonel who commanded an infantry battalion in Afghanistan and also took part in the Bosnian, Gulf, and Iraq Wars. He has spent most of his time in Israel since the current war began. He said many times, most recently on May 30th in the Daily Telegraph: Israel has killed many terrorists and would have killed “many more”….”had the IDF not been so determined to avoid killing the hostages and where possible to avoid harm to civilians with their scrupulously observed obligations under International Humanitarian Law.” Already today, he gave a detailed interview about the new Israeli attack: “Iran was threatening Israel ever since 1979, and now we’ve seen Israel carrying out what so far seems to be the most brilliant operation you can imagine. I doubt if any other country could do it. And it’s an historic occasion because, ultimately, as long as it goes to plan, then a major threat not just to Israel but to the whole region and the whole of the world will have been removed.”

Or, David Petraeus, who despite a romantic scandal remains one of America’s most highly decorated, experienced, and respected Generals, has consistently supported Israel throughout this war, although he has criticized the strategy of clearing areas of Gaza and then leaving them. He has strongly advised a clear and hold strategy instead, which is what Israel has been doing in Gaza for the past few months. “Only if you do that can you begin the restoration of basic services, reconstruction of damaged infrastructure, repair of schools, clinics, markets, roads, etc., and get people back into homes of some type… And they’ll identify the bad guys… And if you do this of course, then you can you can also introduce Palestinian security forces… Arab forces will come in—they’re not going to come in if there’s not security… Then you can demonstrate to the entire world that Palestinians and Israeli Jews can live side by side in harmony.”

So, leading military experts and experienced combat officers (not Jewish) support Israel in this recent process in Gaza and in this latest attack on Iran. The clear and hold strategy in Gaza has not gone smoothly, with tragic casualties occurring around food distribution, and there is little doubt that Iran’s response to today’s attack will intensify. But let us remember the names of those who outrageously and disgustingly began using the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions, thus debasing this precious and valuable word and insulting the memories of the 800,000 Tutsi, 2 million Cambodians, and of course the 6 million Jews the word was invented for—3 groups who are true victims of true genocides.

According to the UN, 160,000 homes have been destroyed in Gaza, and 276,000 damaged. Also according to the UN, about 55,000 Gazans (including terrorists) have been killed, out of a population of 2.2 million. How do you destroy 160,000 homes while killing 55,000 people? Obviously the great majority of the homes were empty—by Israel’s warnings and orders. Would anyone like to guess how long it would take for the IDF to kill all two million Gazans, if they wanted to? Instead they are moving them out of harm’s way. Gaza is at war. War is terrible. But war is not genocide. Not even close.

The collection of vile debasers and anti-Semites who have libeled Israel with “genocide” include Senators Bernie Sanders  and Elizabeth Warren, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the governments of South Africa, Ireland, and Norway, Amnesty International—yes, I once admired it too—and others now thoroughly besmirched with this blood libel of their own twisted invention. It’s interesting to notice the move made by Ireland: they’ve called for a new definition of the word “genocide” so that the Jews could be guilty of it—thus admitting that nothing Israel has done meets any definition of the word that already exists, and also admitting that they want to degrade the meaning and value of the word.

The names of these blood libelers will live in infamy. Shame on them all. Shame, shame, shame.

  • The comment below, which I am publishing in full despite its hiding behind the identity “Anonymous,” makes some fair points about Senator Sanders. He has backed off from the exact word “genocide,” in some settings. However, as “Anonymous” acknowledges, Sanders has used US taxpayers’ money to re-post on his official website statements containing the exact word without himself demurring from its use in the slightest. For example, On February 8, 2024, he republished the statement, “The US should be working to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza, not aiding and abetting it.” Nowhere in this government funded posting does he demur from or qualify the use of the word, in fact he promotes it. Also, he has given credence to the South Africa’s scurrilous accusation of genocide against Israel, and has said that international bodies should decide whether genocide has happened or not. More importantly, Sanders has repeatedly stated (for example in an address to the Senate on May 8 this year) that “what we are seeing niw is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death;” that Israel has “waged a full out barbaric war of annihilation against the Palestinian people;” and that “right now, as we speak, thousands of children are starving to death.” Each of these three statements is !. a lie; 2. a blood libel; and 3. a functional equivalent of genocide. So yes, Anonymous, Sanders has equivocated or even shied away fro the word “genocide,” he has effectively, mendaciously, and in my view antisemitically accused Israel and the Jewish people of genocide, even while he refuses to name his own accusations what they are. And no, Anonymous, I will not apologize to Mr. Sanders. He, on the other hand, urgently needs to apologize to Israel and the Jewish People. (I have also corrected and properly sourced Sanders’ re-posting of the explicit “genocide” accusation in the earlier posting Anonymous criticizes. The upshot—Sanders is a blood libeler—is the same.)

Mel, you should know that your Bernie Sanders quote here, “The US should be working to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza, not aiding and abetting it,” is not something Bernie ever said in the Senate or anywhere else. It comes from this tweet from the Institute for Middle East Understanding:

https://x.com/theIMEU/status/1755305910556332185

I noticed you mentioned Bernie in your newest post and came back to see what your source was. You are smearing Bernie as an anti-Semite blood libeler largely based on something he never said that you didn’t bother to fact check with a simple google search. Bernie has never used the word genocide about Gaza and has gotten confronted by protesters over that fact as recently as late May:

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2025/05/25/sanders-israel-gaza-genocide

Maybe an apology to Bernie is in order?

    • See my extensive reply above. Sanders is indeed a blood libeler who consistently lies about Israel, even while shying away from the word genocide.

Oscar Nominations for Hamas & ICJ Short Films

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I know it’s early to talk about the 2025 Oscars, but two new films deserve to start the ball rolling, for the category of Best Live Action Short Film—not documentary of course, which is separate. Best Live Action Short Film rewards fictional films, although docudrama-like simulations are eligible.

Both films appeared this past week, but I’ll start with the simpler and more dramatic one, aired today. Hamas, in it’s time-honored style, effectively used a static shot of a masked, uniformed fighter talking directly to the camera in his inimitable stern, you-can-trust-me fashion. Timed perfectly with its midnight release, it gives us a static photo of a man in camo with a keffiyeh-wrapped face holding up a stiff instructional finger that takes us right back to first grade, and is all the more compelling for that scary memory. Also, the only moving part of the picture at first—a rippling light-green audio wave sound tracing against a dark-green background—draws our eyes like a line of dancers.

The captioned translation says, “Our fighters carried out a complex operation on Saturday afternoon in the northern Gaza Strip.” Soon we see a video of a bloody person in military clothing being dragged limp up across a tunnel floor; next, three photos of weapons “seized” in this “complex operation.” Since the weapons shown are not Israeli, the filmmakers can be faulted for not getting better advice on how to achieve verisimilitude with their props. But film fans around the world want entertainment, not petty accuracy.

Our teacherly instructor goes on, “Our fighters lured a Zionist force into an ambush inside one of the tunnels…and clashed with them from close range. Our fighters withdrew after blowing up the tunnel and leaving all members of the force dead, wounded, or captured…”

Now, Israel claims no such event occurred, and it is almost never possible to conceal the death of a single soldier for more than a few hours while the family is notified. Killing “all members of” a “Zionist force” without Israeli news media finding out would take some added ingenuity on the part of Hamas, but they can do a lot now with fictional film. Adding an ad campaign with an Israeli soldier-doll in a Hamas fist and a bare arm stuck out of a tunnel grasping at a Hamas boot gives the film true artistic flavor.

Nevertheless, and I am sure this will be controversial, I think the best short-film fiction of the year so far comes from the International Court of Justice, in its filmed reading of it’s latest judgment against Israel in yet another case brought by South Africa. The Court’s cinematic achievement extends also to shielding South Africa from allegations that it is both authoritarian and corrupt, but that is not its main Oscar-worthy accomplishment here.

That is of course its magnificently devious account of its own conclusions. It didn’t really misstate them, it just put them in such a way that gullible news outlets like the New York Times could publish completely misleading headlines. Brilliant work on the part of the screenwriters here! And the head of the ICJ read his lines with such seriousness!

Here is the New York Times headline: “U.N. Court Orders Israel to Halt Rafah Offensive.” Perhaps they thought their subtitle would be a helpful clarification: “The International Court of Justice ruling deepens Israel’s international isolation, but the court has no enforcement powers.” Ah, pity. The court can’t enforce what the Times falsely claims it ruled.

To find out what it did rule, we have to actually read the script of the film as performed by the Chief Judge of the ICJ. The operative passage is #57 in the 18-page ruling:

“THE COURT… Indicates the following provisional measures: The State of Israel shall, in conformity with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by civilians in the Rafah Governorate: (a) By thirteen votes to two, Immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…” (italics mine)

Now let’s see… does the New York Times reporting capture the meaning of this ruling, including the words I italicized? Hmm. Now, what about the Wall Street Journal headline? “U.N. Court Orders Israel to Halt Some Military Operations in Rafah.” Okay… Court Orders Israel to Halt Rafah Offensive… or Court Orders Israel to Halt Some Military Operations in Rafah…

I’m thinking about my first-grade teacher again, the one who taught me how to read. I don’t think she would be proud of me if I chose the Times headline as the better description of what the ICJ ordered. I’ve written many articles for both the Times and the Journal, and I promise you I know the limitations of both, but in this case only the Journal’s headline writer clearly knew how to read.

The court’s conclusions do mandate two and only two actions: That Israel re-open the Rafah Crossing for humanitarian aid, and that Israel give access to a fact-finding committee to inspect conditions throughout Gaza.

The first is based on a misconception; the Rafah Crossing was closed from the Egyptian side, not the Israeli side. This is proven by a phone call from President Biden to President el-Sisi this weekend resulting in Egypt’s agreeing to send aid through the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing at the junction of the Egypt-Israel-Gaza borders. This crossing was closed on May 5 after Hamas bombed it to stop the aid flow. Anyway, aid is flowing, never enough to overcome what Hamas steals after entry, but flowing nevertheless.

As for the second mandate, if the committee expects to be protected by the IDF, it had better follow their advice about where and when.

Meanwhile, as to the ICJ’s main “provisional measure,” Israel continues to refrain from any action in Rafah “which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Still, the court’s ability to trick the New York Times and some other news outlets into misreading its conclusions—or allow them deliberately to spin them against Israel with all their power—is Oscar-worthy. Unfortunately it seems a bit of a stretch to give the Wall Street Journal headline writers a Pulitzer for knowing how to read.

Dear Campus Campers: Do You Know What You’re Up Against? Hint:

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It’s not the police, or the university administrations, or President Biden. It’s this:

These numbers are from late March, before your movement spread widely. We’ll have to see how your protests move the numbers—and in which direction.

I am sympathetic to student protests, having been in the leadership of some on two university campuses in the ‘60s. Our two main goals were 1) to end segregation (the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was our real leader on that) and 2) to end the war in Vietnam. In retrospect, I still believe today what I believed then: We were right on both counts.

But were we successful? On the first count, we accomplished a lot, although there was a long way to go, and there still is now. One big reason for this relative success was of course Dr. King, but another was President Lyndon Baynes Johnson, who politically strong-armed into existence the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (yes, the same laws being broken apart by the current Supreme Court). Nevertheless in those years the culture of the country with regard to race improved in some ways that are difficult to reverse.

But on the second goal, ending the war, we failed miserably. Continue reading →

Gaza: The Goebsie Big Lie-Blood Libel Awards

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Today, I will reveal the honorees for First Annual—okay, they might have to be more frequent—Big Lie-Blood Libel Awards, for the individuals or collectives who have done the most recently to promote the Big Lie and the Blood Libel against the Jewish people (see chart for hints).

Timeline of deaths with blood libelers

But first: Just as the holy, peaceful, month of Ramadan—including four sacred Fridays and the feast of Eid-al-Fitr—blessedly passed with none of the predicted Islamic violence on the Temple Mount (the Noble Sanctuary), in the Middle East, and throughout the world, so the martial, belligerent, massive, unprecedented attack on Israel last night passed with virtually no damage. The coalition that completely blocked the attack included the US, the UK, France, and Jordan shooting down Iranian missiles and drones and Saudi Arabia providing logistic support. Imagine the degree of cooperation that such coordinated response must have involved. Now imagine the formidable coalition that will follow the war, annealed by alliance against this attack. My brother likens the attack to an amateur boxer throwing a hundred punches none of which lands, then waiting with tired arms for the professional blow that will pop his lights out. Now we’ll see what punch Israel uses. Its stock market finished higher today.

But back to our Big Lie-Blood Libel Awards, known colloquially as Goebbsies in honor of Joseph Goebbels, the master propagandist who put it to history’s most effective use.

The chart above shows today’s Goebbsie honorees against the timeline of the dramatically declining deaths in Gaza since the war started. These are total deaths in successive two-week periods (the blue line) as provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry and reported by the United Nations. There are many reasons to doubt these numbers, which are almost certainly over-estimates, but I am accepting them for present purposes because I want to focus on the steep decline—by Hamas’s numbers—and the remarkable fact that the lower the number of deaths got, the bigger the Big Lie got and the Bloodier the Blood Libel got as well. Five of the six Big Lies and Blood Libels shown here were smeared on Israel and the Jews when the number of deaths was about one quarter of what it was in the first month of the war—and declining. Continue reading →

Gaza War: A Visual Aid

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(Blogging on the Gaza War since January 14th. Please link them on to others.)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I shouldn’t have much more work to do this week. I started with the very good public website of Kevin Drum, who presented the first graph in the top half of the picture (panel a). Based on data from the (Hamas-run) Gaza Health Ministry via the UN, it displays the daily deaths (red dots) of Gazans from October 7 to February 19, with a linear function (dotted black line) fitted to the daily data. This function declines from between 300-400 in October to 100 in February.

The lower part of the figure (panel b, my responsibility alone) is my attempt to extend Drum’s excellent graph from February to today. The daily deaths (also from the Gaza Health Ministry via the UN) are shown as blue dots, with the red line representing the 7-day moving average. Please note that the two graphs are on very different scales. Continue reading →

Gaza War: Silly Sauce

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(Scroll down to see earlier posts starting January 14th.)

Given certain remarks in the news lately, I thought it might be silly season, but not everybody is silly. Upon careful investigation I learned about Silly Sauce. Like beluga caviar, it is only for a select few—but not the rich. Only political leaders who can’t resist sipping it and don’t mind brain fog.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) first alerted me. He must have sipped some from his hip flask before going down to the Senate floor on March 14th. It was an interesting speech, touching to me in many ways. He said he was speaking for “a silent majority” of “mainstream Jewish Americans” in his “nuanced” view of the Gaza War. He’s a landsman of mine; I went to the next high school over from his a few years earlier. We grew up in the same culture of Brooklyn-Jewish love for Israel in the time when its survival was unlikely. “We love Israel in our bones.”

But, “What horrifies so many Jews especially…is that Israel is falling short” of “distinctive Jewish values.” What exactly are those? He recounts the history of the conflict and the “perfidy” of Hamas in a way that most Jews, including Israelis, can accept. He blasts the right-wing thugs in the Israeli cabinet and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as “obstacles to peace.”

Fine. But he gives Bibi Netanyahu special attention. Almost all he says about Bibi would be endorsed by the great majority of Israelis. Eighty-five percent disapprove of Bibi, and a growing number support early elections—which Schumer crossed a line to call for.

But here’s the silly part: Schumer calls Bibi too an obstacle to peace, which implies that without him the war would be different. It would not. If 85 percent of Israelis dislike Bibi, about the same percentage approve of how the war is being conducted. Replace Bibi with Gantz or Gallant, and you will get the same war, the same operation in Rafa, the same checking of aid trucks for weapons. The vast majority of Israelis want the war to continue until Hamas is completely disabled.

Apparently Chuck then passed the Silly Sauce on to Vice President Kamala Harris, Continue reading →

Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism

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(Scroll down to see earlier posts in this series, beginning January 14th.)

This will be my most personal posting, since its wellspring is my childhood experience. Although I supply citations, I could have written this from memory. One example: during the years I was praying regularly (age 8-17), I said these words every day: V’tekhazena eyneynu b’shuvkha l’Tzion b’rakhamim—May our eyes behold Thy return to Zion in mercy. In fact, observant Jews said it three times every day for twenty centuries, as part of the Amidah,[1] the holiest prayer after the Shema (Hear O Israel). Along with God’s Unity and the primacy of Torah—the first five books of the Bible—the longing for Zion is intrinsic to the Jewish faith.

Let’s go back to, not the beginning of Judaism, but early enough: the composition of Psalm 137, roughly 2,500 years old, describing the exile of Jews in Babylon. Some may recall the 1970s Rastafari song that echoed the Psalm:

By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down,

And there we wept, when we remembered Zion…

For the Jamaican singers, Zion stood for Africa, but, as with other African diaspora songs, they adopted the ancient Jewish narrative as a symbol for their suffering. But for the Jews in Babylon it was no metaphor. It was brutal exile and a desperate longing for home. The psalm begins as the song does, but in lines 5-6,

If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning…

Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

Continue reading →

Gaza War: Academic Fairy Tales

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(Scroll down to see earlier posts in this series, beginning January 14th.)

Fair Harvard, thy sons to thy jubilee throng,

And in faith with thy glorious past,

By these odious rites now surrender thee o’er

To the murders and rapes of Hamas.*

This rewrite of the first stanza of Harvard’s alma mater—find the original wording and the history here—is impolite but not unfair, given the recent outpouring of hatred of Israel and, to a lesser extent, of Jews, on this nearly 400-year-old American campus. Most pointedly, Harvard’s students and faculty have supported a terror group whose grotesque atrocities against Jews and others in Israel are unprecedented in modern times. Can Harvard students and faculty be useful idiots, shills for Hamas mass murderers?

Don’t get me wrong. I have no desire to limit the free speech of deluded or even malicious faculty and students. Only a few have gone so far as to merit a legal crackdown against them. I’m not saying it’s fine to spew hatred of Israel, Zionism, and Jews, merely that I have to weigh these wrongs against the wrong of muzzling them, and given the first amendment’s protections, letting them puke up their lies is the lesser of two evils. But that doesn’t mean there are no remedies.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wisely said that the remedy for noxious speech is more speech, and Jewish students on these campuses can avail themselves of that opportunity—although at a risk of harm if they do or even if they let it be known that they are Jewish. They of course cannot have anything like the kind of college experience they signed up and paid for, just to stay in their rooms and go warily to class in groups and in daylight hours. That is the price they must pay for the first amendment protections of others, and ultimately their own, if they go to those schools.

Continue reading →

Gaza, Israel, and the United Notions

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I was born in August 1946; the first UN meetings were held in London in January that year. So the UN and I are the same age—you might say, nonidentical twins. I have followed it from an early age, and I am glad to report that—despite the small scale and limitations of my lifetime efforts—I have done better with my challenges than my twin has in its equal lifetime.

Per the UN itself, the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s proved “in the worst possible way” that the UN repeatedly failed to prevent this horror, despite being able to do so. It failed to stop and even to recognize earlier genocides in Indonesia (1960s) and Cambodia (1970s) and much more recent ones in Darfur, Iraq and Syria (against the Yazidis), and Myanmar (the Rohingya). The UN rights council refused to discuss China’s ongoing genocide of Uighur Muslims.

The UN’s failure to prevent small wars—more than 200 in its lifetime and mine—speaks for itself; advocates argue that it has prevented World War III, but that is conjectural. Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning its Ukraine invasion, although the General Assembly passed it overwhelmingly. The UN has done good work against hunger and slavery and promoting sustainable development, but has consistently fallen short of its own stated goals. More than 780 million people (and rising) face hunger, and there are more slaves in the world today than ever before in human history.

Continue reading →

Gaza Plus

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From the moment it moved its first aircraft carrier into the eastern Mediterranean, the US has adamantly said and said again that it wants to avoid a regional war. Despite that reluctance, regional war is here.

In a sense it has been from the start, since Iran (a non-Arab, often anti-Arab country) is on the east of the region, but its empire of vassals and proxies control Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen as well as infiltrating Iraq and Syria with its own soldiers (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC) and arming Hamas in the occupied West Bank.

After the US accepted more than 160 attacks on its limited forces and facilities in Iraq and Syria, three US soldiers (two women and a man) were killed about two weeks ago, and the US vowed retaliation. Heavy strikes directed at key targets in Syria and Iraq occurred last Friday night, with more to come.

The Houthis, the terrorist group controlling Yemen, has for months attacked merchant ships in the Red Sea, impeding twenty percent of world commerce and decimating Suez Canal traffic. The group also attacks US naval vessels. Continue reading →