The Yemeni Army and Houthi rebels each exchanged 21 prisoners in a historic exchange on April 16 / credit: Anadolu Agency
Peace in Yemen One Step Closer After Historic Prisoner Exchange
The Saudi-backed government forces in Yemen and the rebel Houthis completed a three-day prisoner exchange on April 16. Close to 900 prisoners have been exchanged between the two warring sides through mid-April. The exchange is the result of an agreement reached in Switzerland in March as part of a round of ongoing peace and reconciliation talks between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia—the primary supporter of the Yemeni government.
The historic peace talks are seen as a result of the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia brokered by China. A resolution toward ending the years-long war in Yemen was reportedly one of the key issues in the Saudi-Iran rapprochement.
The prisoner exchange has been widely recognized as an important step towards peace in a war that has already claimed over 1.5 million lives, according to the Houthi-backed administration in Sana’a, and displaced millions. As a consequence of the Saudi-imposed blockade, millions of people, including at least 2.2 million children, have also suffered from acute malnutrition and hunger.
UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, who helped broker the prisoner exchange agreement in Switzerland, commented, “This release operation comes at a time of hope for Yemen as a reminder that constructive dialogue and mutual compromises are powerful tools capable of achieving great outcomes. Today, hundreds of Yemeni families get to celebrate Eid with their loved ones because the parties negotiated and reached an agreement. I hope this spirit is reflected in ongoing efforts to advance a comprehensive political solution.”
Palestinian activists take part in a protest in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners / credit: MEMO
On Prisoners’ Day, Palestinians Stand in Solidarity With Their 5,000 Comrades in Israeli Occupation Jails
On April 16, the eve of Prisoners’ Day, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) stated that a jailed Palestinian, Khader Adnan, is in a critical state and needs immediate hospitalization. Adnan is currently on an indefinite hunger strike against his unlawful detention by the Israeli occupation forces.
Adnan, aged 45, has completed over 70 days of his hunger strike and is currently inside Israel’s notorious Ramla prison clinic, despite repeated appeals to shift him to a proper hospital. The PPS claimed that Adnan is already suffering from serious health issues and “Israel’s refusal to move him to a hospital aims at causing him chronic diseases that are difficult to treat later.”
Adnan has been arrested 12 times in the last 20 years and has spent over eight years altogether in Israeli administrative detention. He has been on hunger strike since the beginning of his present incarceration, in the first week of February. This is his sixth hunger strike and his longest so far.
Palestinians mark Prisoners’ Day every year on April 17 to express solidarity with their freedom fighters inside Israeli prisons. According to a joint report published on the occasion, there are around 4,900 Palestinians inside different Israeli prisons, including 31 women and 160 children.
Most Palestinian prisoners face widespread atrocities from the Israeli prison authorities, including denial of family meetings, restrictions on interactions with other prisoners, and torture.
Several thousand people marched in Philadelphia on May 15 against the state-sanctioned violence, settler-colonialism and apartheid occurring in Sheikh Jarrah and all of Occupied Palestine / credit: Joe Piette
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s opinion.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan is leading his country’s anti-Palestinian propaganda, this time engaging in pre-emptive hasbara in anticipation of a Palestinian response to the ongoing evictions in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
“Would you consider it a terror attack if a rock like this was thrown at your car while driving with your children?” Erdan asked the United Nations Security Council members, while holding the rock in his hands. “Would you, at the very least, condemn these brutal terror attacks carried out against Israeli civilians by Palestinians?”
This Israeli logic is quite typical, where oppressed Palestinians are depicted to be the aggressor, and oppressive Israel – a racist apartheid state by any standard – presents itself as a victim merely engaging in defending its own citizens.
But Erdan’s selective logic is, this time around, compelled by something else. His UN charade is merely aimed at creating a distraction from the ongoing horrific events transpiring in Sheikh Jarrah and throughout occupied East Jerusalem. On Wednesday, January 19, the Palestinain Salhiya family’s home was demolished by Israel, rendering 15 people, mostly children, homeless.
A few days earlier, a heart-wrenching event took place on top of that very site, when members of the Salhiya family threatened to set themselves ablaze as they agonized over the imminent loss of their family home.
“We have nothing left for us in Jerusalem. This is ethnic cleansing. Today me, tomorrow my neighbors. We’d rather die on our land with dignity than surrender to them,” Mahmoud Salhiya, the owner of the house said, before he was dissuaded by neighbors not to set himself on fire.
These tragic events are being watched closely, first by Palestinians and also by people around the world. If the momentum of Israeli destruction continues, chances are we could witness another popular uprising. Erdan’s spectacle at the UN is a desperate act of propaganda to sway members of the international community from criticizing Israel.
But Israel is failing at making a case for itself, similar to its failure to defend its horrific violence against Palestinians throughout occupied Palestine in May 2021. Even Israel’s traditional allies are speaking out against the latest round of ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah.
The US envoy to the United Nations expressed ‘concern’ over the forced expulsion in the Palestinian neighborhood. “To make progress, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority must refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, using the usually guarded language. However, Thomas-Greenfield went on to warn against the “annexations of territory, settlement activity, demolitions and evictions – like what we saw in Sheikh Jarrah.”
A view of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem / credit David Shankbone
Also on January 19, US lawmaker, Rep. Mark Pocan strongly criticized the Israeli decision to forcefully evict the Salhiya family in Sheikh Jarrah.
“Last night, in the cover of darkness & freezing cold, the homes of the Salhiyeh family in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, were destroyed by Israeli forces leaving 15 people homeless. This is unacceptable and must end,” Pocan tweeted, adding the popular hashtag #Savesheikhjarrah.
For his part, the UN Middle East special envoy, Tor Wennsland, strongly condemned the expulsion of the Palestinian family by Israeli occupation authorities.
“I call on Israeli authorities to end the displacement and eviction of Palestinians, in line with its obligations under international law, and to approve additional plans that would enable Palestinian communities to build legally and address their development needs,” the UN website reported Wennesland as saying.
Back to Erdan’s display, where he showcased Palestinian ‘terrorism’ by presenting the supposedly damning evidence of a rock.
It must be said that criticizing or defending Palestinian resistance, however symbolic, allows Israel to engage in a misleading and frivolous conversation that creates a moral equivalence between the occupier and the occupied, the colonialist and the colonized.
Whether Palestinians use a stone, a gun or a clenched fist to resist and defend themselves, their resistance is morally and legally justifiable. Israel, on the other hand, like all other military occupiers and colonialists, has neither a moral nor a legal argument to justify its oppression of Palestinians, the destruction of their homes – like that of the Salhiya family – and the killing of their children.
Judging by the growing solidarity with Palestinians everywhere, it is clear that Erdan’s pathetic display is just another exercise in political futility.
Nothing that Israel can say or do will alter the glaring reality, that a new generation of Palestinians is, once again, unifying the Palestinian discourse, namely around Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation. Whether Israeli oppression is happening in Sheikh Jarrah, in Gaza, or the Naqab desert, Palestinians now collectively respond as one unified political body. Thanks to the May 2021 rebellion, gone are the days in which Palestinians are expelled from their homes in the middle of the night as if a routine event, with no consequence.
Moreover, the political language that is being used to describe events in Palestine in the international arena is itself changing. Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ is no longer the knee-jerk reaction that is often used to describe Israeli violence and Palestinian resistance.
And finally, it seems that Israel is no longer the party shaping events in Palestine and controlling the discourse around these events. Palestinians, and a growing international movement of supporters, are proactively shaping global perceptions of the realities on the ground. Neither Erdan nor his bosses in Tel Aviv can reverse this Palestinian-led momentum. His UN display merely reflects the degree of desperation and intellectual bankruptcy of Israel and its representatives.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His forthcoming book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out.” Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is ramzybaroud.net.
A camp for the displaced in the vicinity of the Yemeni city of Ma’rib / credit: Norwegian Refugee Council
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in People’s Dispatch and has been lightly edited.
On Tuesday, February 15, United Nations officials issued a stark warning that incessant war in Yemen and a funding shortage for various aid programs could drastically exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis in the country. UN special envoy Hans Grundberg and UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths, while speaking at the UN Security Council (UNSC), said 8 million Yemenis are at imminent risk of being cut off from vital humanitarian aid in March if the international community fails to secure the required funds for the aid programs to continue. Funding for the aid programs in Yemen has been steadily decreasing, with the UN humanitarian office stating that for the year 2021, its humanitarian plan was only able to secure USD $2.27 billion out of the required USD $3.85 billion, the lowest funding level since 2015.
The two UN officials also expressed alarm at the rapid escalation in the war in Yemen, ongoing since 2014. They highlighted the drastic rise in civilian casualties over the last few months and the growth in new combat areas in the country, which is likely to add to the death toll and suffering of the civilian population. Since the war erupted following the Houthi movement’s routing of the Western-backed government from most of north Yemen—including the capital, Sanaa—followed by the intervention of the Saudi-led alliance, over 377,000 people have been killed, as per the latest UN estimates. Tens of millions of Yemenis have also been internally displaced, with over 24 million—approximately 80 percent of the total population of 30 million—dependent on international humanitarian aid for their survival.
Yemen is highlighted in red / credit: Google
Grundberg was quoted by news outlets as telling the UNSC that a series of air bombings by the Saudi-led military coalition targeting a detention facility in Yemen last month was the “worst civilian casualty incident in three years.” He also noted an increase in such devastating air bombing campaigns by the coalition that target even civilian areas in Sanaa and the strategically important port city of Hodeidah. Over 650 civilians were either killed or injured by air raids, shelling, small arms fire and other forms of violence in January, in what officials claimed was “by far the highest toll in at least three years.”
Griffiths said that “the war is finding people in their homes, schools, mosques, hospitals and other places where civilians should be protected.” According to the officials, the retaliatory attacks by Houthis in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) also “indicate how this conflict risks spiraling out of control unless serious efforts are urgently made by the Yemeni parties, the region and the international community to end the conflict.” Griffiths told the UNSC that he is continuously trying to mediate between the warring parties to agree to de-escalate the conflict, with more consultations to start next week aimed at achieving a mutual ceasefire.
Previous funding cuts have already forced the UN World Food Program to reduce the amount of rations supplied to 8 million Yemenis in December last year. If the funding requirement is not met, the rations for millions of Yemenis could stop completely and around 3.6 million people will be at risk of not having access to safe drinking water and several other critical social programs on tackling gender-based violence, reproductive health, and other such issues. The UN may also have to cancel most of its humanitarian flights in Yemen in March due to the funding shortage. News reports state that while the UN has not yet released its humanitarian plan for Yemen for 2022, Sweden and Switzerland are poised to co-host a pledging event on March 16.
The rapper, Lowkey, speaking at a rally in support of persecuted journalist Julian Assange / credit: Justin Ng / Avalon
Editor’s Note: This article was first published by Electronic Intifada. An “own goal” is a term from soccer (football) describing a goal inadvertently scored when the ball is struck into the goal by a player on the defensive team.
For more than a decade, Lowkey has been regarded as an enemy by Israel’s lobbying network.
Back in 2011, the right-wing Jewish Chronicledescribed the London-based rapper’s ability to reach a young audience as a “potential nightmare.”
Judging by more recent attacks against Lowkey, it would seem that his determination to raise awareness about how Palestinians live under an apartheid system has indeed kept Israel’s supporters awake at night.
Unable to find flaws in his arguments, the lobby has told lies about him.
An example of how he has been deliberately misquoted came after he made a live appearance on BBC radio in 2017.
He performed “Letter to the 1%,” a track pledging solidarity with “victims of the globalized cosa nostra.” Despite obviously referencing the Sicilian mafia, The Jewish Chroniclefalsely charged that he had uttered the anti-Semitic phrase “kosher nostra.”
Due to a threatened lawsuit, the newspaper published a retraction.
Smears Step Up a Gear
The smear campaign against Lowkey has stepped up a gear over the past six months.
In December 2021, the rapper was booked for a gig in London’s Jazz Cafe. The venue came under pressure to call off the show, which celebrated the 10th anniversary of his album, Soundtrack to the Struggle.
And in March this year, Lowkey was scheduled to speak at a conference organized by Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS), marking its centenary.
As soon as the lineup for the event was announced, the journalist Theo Usherwood wrote a series of tweets.
Usherwood, political editor with the radio station LBC, highlighted comments made by Lowkey about how the mainstream media was “weaponizing the Jewish heritage” of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, in order to “stave off” questions about far-right groups in Ukraine.
Although Lowkey’s analysis was based on demonstrable facts, Usherwood described it as “theorizing.”
New: Rapper Lowkey to appear at the NUS’s annual conference at end of month.
Also appearing at the conference is Labour MP Zarah Sultana.
Earlier, Lowkey said MSM has “weaponised the Jewish heritage” of Zelenskyy to “stave off” inquiries about far right groups in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/xMwjmooipU
Usherwood is considered an ally by the pro-Israel lobby, as the blogger David Collier has made clear.
Vilified
Following Usherwood’s tweets, The Daily Mail, one of Britain’s most widely read newspapers, published an article on the event to which Lowkey had been invited.
The article featured comments from Nina Freedman, who heads the Union of Jewish Students. She claimed that Lowkey had “spread conspiracies about Jewish students, 9/11 and the war in Ukraine.”
Although Freedman was quoted at length, the article did not elaborate on the “conspiracies” she had in mind.
It also did not mention that the Union of Jewish Students is financed by the Israeli embassy in London, as an investigation by Al Jazeera has revealed.
The NUS was vilified by the Campaign Against Antisemitism – another Israel lobby group – over how it responded to complaints about the invitation to Lowkey.
The NUS recommended that people who took umbrage at Lowkey’s views could avoid listening to him and even offered a “safe space” where they could go during his appearance. Yet the Campaign Against Antisemitism distorted that offer as a suggestion that “the Jewish students literally segregate themselves.”
Some elected politicians even got involved in efforts to bully the NUS.
Andrew Percy, a member of the British Parliament, described the offer of a “safe space” to offended students as “sinister.” He called on Larissa Kennedy, president of the NUS, to resign.
Another MP Robert Halfon contended that Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission should investigate the NUS for what he alleged was “institutional anti-Semitism.”
Both Percy and Halfon have held senior positions with Conservative Friends of Israel, a pressure group inside Britain’s ruling party.
‘Own Goal’
The NUS capitulated to the pressure.
Lowkey was dropped from the conference to which he was invited. Instead, it was proposed that he could have a role in a fringe event marking the NUS centenary.
When Lowkey refused to accept that proposal, the NUS claimed– dishonestly – that he had simply pulled out of the conference.
The bullying did not go unchallenged.
The group Palestine Action – best known for smashing up Israeli weapons factories – protested against how Lowkey had been canceled by scaling the roof of the venue where the NUS celebrated its 100th birthday.
According to Palestine Action, a number of students active in the NUS took part in that protest.
Tonight, Students & NUS delegates scaled the roof & gate crashed the NUS' 100th birthday party venue. They acted in solidarity with @Lowkey0nline, who was cancelled from the event. Try to silence or set security on ANY of us & we'll come back louder, stronger and bolder… pic.twitter.com/BFThUwLKV9
Lowkey is also the target of a campaign aimed at removing his music from the major streaming website Spotify. That campaign has been launched by Luke Akehurst from the lobby group We Believe in Israel.
Speaking to The Electronic Intifada, Lowkey pointed out that Akehurst’s group is known to work with Israel’s government.
The calls for censorship—which have been opposed by the actor Mark Ruffalo, the rapper Wretch 32 and the rock star Roger Waters among many others—are “ultimately an own goal,” Lowkey added.
“Artists and musicians should never have to fear threats to their livelihood or person for the music they make,” he added. “We will not be silenced on Palestine. Not now, not ever.”
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Twitter: @KitKlarenberg
