RAF fighter jets have taken part in joint bombing exercises over western Asia with the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and F-15 and F-35 fighters of the Israeli air force, believed to be preparation for attacks on Iran.
The 4 March exercise – the third in two weeks – involved giant US B-52H ‘Stratofortress’ bombers that took off from Fairford RAF base in England and conducted the exercise in CENTCOM’s ‘area of responsibility’, which comprises the ‘Middle East’ and parts of southern Asia.
The latest exercise follows a live-weapon drop on 20 February that the US military said involved B-52s conducting “multiple missions over the Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea”. With typically Orwellian language, the Pentagon said that these missions ‘promote security and stability’ in the region. In the past twelve months the US has used the B-52s, along with B-1 and B-2 bombers, to bomb Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
A view of damage to several buildings at Sana’a International Airport following an airstrike carried out by the Israeli army last night in the Houthi-controlled capital of Yemen on December 27, 2024. [Mohammed Hamoud – Anadolu Agency]
Israel, the US and Britain, on Friday, carried out their first coordinated attack on Houthi targets in Yemen, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Houthi-affiliated Al-Masirah TV also reported that a series of air strikes targeted the vicinity of the Al-Sabeen Square in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, Anadolu Agency reports.
The attack coincided with a rally in support of Palestine amid Israel’s 16-month-old continuing genocidal war on Gaza.
Additionally, the Houthis reported six air strikes on the port city of Al-Hudaydah in western Yemen.
The report did not provide additional details on the impact of the strikes.
The escalation came after the Houthis said, on Monday, that they had attacked the US aircraft carrier, “USS Harry Truman” in the northern Red Sea and claimed missile and drone attacks on targets in southern and central Israel.
The Houthis have targeted Israeli cargo ships or ones linked with Tel Aviv in the Red Sea with missiles and drones in a show of support with the Gaza Strip, where over 46,000 people have been killed in Israel’s genocidal war since October 2023.
Since early 2024, a coalition led by the US has been carrying out air strikes that it said target Houthi locations in Yemen in response to the group’s Red Sea attacks, with occasional retaliation from the Houthis.
Fascists Mussolini and Hitler salute the Labour Party
I suggest that I should be regarded as a skilled and capable adversary to the UK Labour Party. I have a long history of opposing the Labour Party and while I am younger than Blair in one or two important ways I am the elder. I believe and sincerely hope that I have damaged the UK Labour Party under Keir SStarmer’s leadership. The UK Labour Party has a huge parliamentary majority from the July 2024 election only because Reform split the Conservative vote. Starmer & Co are now hugely unpopular. I have no doubt contributed to that unpopularity but I am only one part of a groundswell of opinion. In this new year I hope that others will join me to reaffirming our opposition and redoubling our efforts to damage the Labour Party enemy.
The problem is that the UK Labour Party under Keir Starmer is complicit in, is aiding and abetting and is facilitating Zionist genocide in Gaza and the West Bank and colonialist expansion in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
Palestinians are not to be treated as sub-human and denied human rights – the right to life and liberty, to be free from collective punishment and forced relocation – just as second world war Jews should not have been treated as untermensch and were denied these exact same rights. The same crimes that the Nazi Fascists committed are now committed by Zionist Neo-Fascists, supported and facilitated by the UK Labour Party.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Relatives and friends mourn over the bodies of five Palestinian journalists who were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, December 26, 2024
ISRAEL bombing the airport in Yemen’s capital Sana’a when World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was actually at it shows a brazen contempt for the United Nations.
It is not new. Israel has expressed this contempt repeatedly. Most dramatically when its ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan used a miniature shredder to shred the UN Charter after the general assembly voted in favour of giving Palestine full membership in May.
But it is seen too in the bombardment of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. In the evidence-free assertion that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA harbours Hamas fighters and subsequent decree banning the agency from operating in Israel-controlled territory — meaning the whole of Palestine.
Benjamin Netanyahu accuses the United Nations of intrinsic hostility to Israel, calling it an “anti-Israel flat Earth society” which has “an automatic majority willing to demonise the Jewish state.”
The siege mentality is deliberate: only by presenting this fortress state, so extravagantly armed by its Washington sponsors that it can extend its bombing campaigns across Lebanon, Syria and Yemen after over a year of carpet-bombing Gaza, as under constant existential menace can he justify its frenetic aggression.
Enforcing this narrative is why Israel has become more authoritarian in step with its increasing belligerence, codifying institutional racism through measures like the Nation-State Law and pending legislation that could bar parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel (and the Communist Party of Israel to boot) from standing in elections.
As its suspended communist MP Ofer Cassif warns, there is no positive outcome possible from this vicious cycle: an unendable, unwinnable war against the world will bring Israelis neither security nor peace.
Israel is a rogue state, a danger to itself and others, but it will not be stopped by other rogue states. Just as the agony of the Palestinians continues due to the US policy of unlimited support for Israel, we cannot expect the so-called “free world” to step in on Yemen’s behalf.
Least of all Britain. When evidence of Saudi Arabia deliberately bombing Yemeni schools and hospitals became undeniable, even the United States paused arms sales — but Britain did not.
Expecting our government to be persuaded or even shamed into upholding international law is a fool’s errand.
There is much to criticise in the United Nations: its undemocratic structure, the way the veto power can be wielded to shield perpetrators of war crimes.
Even so, since the beginning of the 21st century a clear division has emerged between the US-led West, awarding itself the right to violate international law by invading, bombing and assassinating whoever it likes, and emerging powers which support the United Nations — a creation of the Allied victory over fascism, intended to prevent the lawless aggression that characterised Nazi Germany and its allies.
China brokered peace in Yemen through a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. China continually makes the case too for UN recognition of a Palestinian state, and hosted talks between 14 Palestinian factions last year in an attempt to forge a united Palestinian leadership capable of taking that project forward.
China, like most of the global South, is not happy with an international system designed in Western capitals 80 years ago, and calls for a more equitable international order. Yet China, unlike the Western founders of that system, is acting to uphold its principles and prevent the world descending into the kind of “might is right” violence the UN was supposed to stop.
We need to recognise how the world looks from outside the West. The “rules-based international order” is not threatened by emerging powers, but by the US-led imperialist camp. We don’t rein in Israel, because its violence is ours.
This is why solidarity with Palestine means fighting for peace and disarmament in Britain, and resisting the constant militarist propaganda pretending our country is under threat.
Protesters in the million man march in Yemen on December 27. Photo: Screenshot
Israel has escalated its attacks against Yemen, most recently launching airstrikes on civilian infrastructure at Sanaa Airport which almost resulted in the death of the WHO Director.
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) intensified aerial attacks on Yemen in the last several days, as Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces continued operations against Israel in retaliation for the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, and against Israel’s allies who attempt to bypass the blockade imposed by Ansar Allah of Israel.
On Thursday, December 26, Israeli warplanes targeted civilian facilities of Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport, including the airports’ main runway, control tower, and an aircraft, according to the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post.
At least three people were killed in the assault and 16 others injured including the assistant to the captain of a United Nations’ plane. The plane had landed in Sanaa International Airport to transport the Director-General of World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the UN resident coordinator in Yemen, Julian Harnis, shortly before the airstrike was launched.
The Yemeni Foreign Minister Jamal Amer considered the timing of the attack as a “direct affront and a mockery of the UN”, particularly as the co-pilot of the UN aircraft was injured.
For his part Ghebreyesus issued a statement on Thursday, explaining the circumstances of the airstrike on the airport, and confirming his presence along with other WHO and UN colleagues there at the time of the attack.
“As we were about to board our flight from Sanaa, about three hours ago (around 5 pm local time), the airport came under aerial bombardment. One of our plane’s crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport,” the statement reads.
“The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters from where we were — and the runway were damaged. We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave,” the statement continues.
Israeli fighter jets also targeted other sites in Hodeidah governorate in western Yemen including Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations, and military infrastructure located in the ports of Hodeidah, according to IOF.
The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his deep concern “about the risk of further escalation and has urged all parties to cease military actions and exercise restraint.” Guterres also warned “that airstrikes on Red Sea ports and Sanaa airport pose grave risks to humanitarian operations at a time when millions of people are in need of life-saving assistance.”
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) strongly condemned the aggression on Yemen, which it said “proves the Zionist-Western alliance’s bankruptcy in facing Yemen’s resistance.” Meanwhile, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) called the onslaught “a flagrant violation of sovereignty and acts of terrorism”.
Israel claimed that it escalated its aggression on Yemen after the Yemeni Armed Forces stepped up its missile and drone attack on Israel during the past few weeks. Speaking to local media on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to launch an open war on Yemen. “We’re just getting started with them,” Netanyahu said. “We won’t allow them [to attack Israel] these days, today and any other day. We will strike them to the bitter end until they learn. As I said, Hamas learned, Hezbollah learned, and Syria learned. The Houthis will learn too,” he added.
However, the Yemeni Armed Forces defied Netanyahu’s threats by carrying out three significant military operations against the Zionist entity on Friday, December 27. The operations included targeting Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv with a hypersonic missile, striking a military site in Jaffa with a drone, and the interception of a ship in the Arabian Sea after it violated the blockade imposed on Israeli ports.
The spokesperson of the Yemeni Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Sare’e said in a televised statement on Friday, that these operations were carried out as part of the fifth phase of support for Gaza, and in response to Israeli aggression in Yemen, including recent airstrikes on civilian infrastructure in Sanaa and Hodeidah. Saree further emphasized that Israel’s aggression on his country “will only increase the resolve and determination of the great Yemeni people to continue supporting the Palestinian people, fulfilling their religious, moral, and humanitarian duty.”
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement praised the Yemeni missile strike on Lod (Ben Gurion) Airport, considering it “a legitimate response to the aggression on Sana’a Airport and Yemeni civilian facilities.”
Since the genocidal aggression on Gaza began in the aftermath of October 7, Israel has launched sporadic attacks on Yemen viewing it as one of seven fronts alongside Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, which represent the Axis of Resistance.
During the last couple of months, the Axis of Resistance received heavy blows after Gaza’s support front in Lebanon had to temporarily stop its confrontations with Israel as per the fragile interim ceasefire agreement reached last November. Following the overthrow of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Israel destroyed the country’s military infrastructure and the transitional government showed its willingness to establish “peace” with Israel.
All these factors made Netanyahu more determined than ever to demolish the military capabilities of Yemen, even if this would mean expanding the genocidal aggression to other parts of the West Asia region at the expense of civilians.
