The US massacred civilians in Yemen with repeated strikes on a Hodeidah fuel port on Wednesday night, killing some 17 workers in the first bombing and five medical workers in the second “double tap” attack. [The death count would later rise to over 80.]
They’re not even trying to disguise this as a strike on a military target; CENTCOM’s sole justification was that “The objective of these strikes was to degrade the economic source of power of the Houthis,” saying that “Despite the Foreign Terrorist Designation that went into effect on 05 April, ships have continued to supply fuel via the port of Ras Isa.”
They’re not even claiming the port was a “Houthi stronghold” or some shit; their sole claim is that Washington decreed Ansar Allah are terrorists, so they have a right to massacre civilians while destroying critical civilian infrastructure.
Israel’s actions in Gaza are shredding norms all over the place.
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It’s probably worth noting here that Trump officials have said they’d stop bombing Yemen if Ansar Allah said they’d stop attacking US ships, but Ansar Allah made exactly that offer recently and the bombing has continued. The offer was likely ignored because Yemen would still be attacking Israeli ships, and this is really about protecting Israel’s ability to commit genocide in Gaza.
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I saw Cenk Uygur saying that Trump “deserves a ton of credit” because of a New York Times report that, for the time being, he has decided to opt for diplomacy with Iran rather than war.
No, Trump does not deserve “credit” for deciding to hold off on starting a war with Iran. That’s like saying I deserve a trophy for not firebombing a preschool today.
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There’s a lot going on right now, but the Gaza holocaust is still the worst and most significant thing happening in the world today.
A Palestinian boy burned to death in his wheelchair by Israeli bombs—because he couldn’t move.
Read that again. Let it sink in.
— Hamza Yusuf (@Hamza_a96) April 17, 2025
The challenge at this point is not so much getting information out about the Gaza holocaust, but getting people to really SEE it. Moving it out of the periphery of their awareness as one more bad thing happening in our world and getting them to viscerally grasp what’s happening.
That’s why you’ll see pro-Palestine accounts saying things like “Read that again” and “Let that sink in” when pointing to the horrific things Israel is doing. Everyone pretty much knows there’s something terrible happening in Gaza by now, but it’s kind of a back burner issue for most people, simmering in the background while their attention is steered toward issues that are less inconvenient to our rulers, like the feuding between mainstream political parties. They’re trying to get them to really stop and experience the reality of this nightmare.
The task therefore is to keep finding new ways to get people to see this thing with fresh eyes. Not as one more terrible thing happening in the world that they don’t like to think about, but for the extremely urgent crisis that it is. Turning each raw fact about this thing from one more data point in a sea of indecipherable white noise into something real in people’s experience.
You don’t need to be an investigative journalist or expert analyst to do this. The information is all right there in the public. All you have to do is keep finding new and creative ways to get people to really see it and feel it.
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Israel’s assaults on the West Bank are a different order of collective punishment from Gaza, because nobody in the West Bank even had anything to do with October 7. There’s not even any pretense that it’s because of something they did; it’s just “They’re Palestinians. Destroy them.”
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Same movie, different soundtrack. That’s Gaza under Trump.
The Biden administration backed a genocide while occasionally making noises about humanitarian concerns, and now the Trump administration backs a genocide without making those noises.
All that’s changed is the noise.
Source: Caitlin Johnstone
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