There are a few explanations offered for why Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen. One says it’s so the Sunni Saudi regime can stop Shia Iran’s regional influence. That narrative claims Iran is backing Yemen’s Houthi rebels in their conflict with Saudi-supported president Hadi. Others claim Iran’s connections to the Houthi are marginal & that the Saudi feudal monarch has domestic reasons for waging war–including placating rivalries within the ruling family in a power & succession struggle favoring one of his sons. Other explanations bring in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (the Pentagon’s favorite boogiemen), ISIS, & even tribal secessionists in Yemen. Too much of this kind of analysis rots the brain.

Saudi Arabia is a bastion of reaction in the Middle East, playing a collaborating role in neoliberal domination of the region. It was vital to the US in the two Iraq Wars & it remains vital to US & European economic, political, & military control–along with the Bahraini monarchy, Egyptian military junta, & Israeli colonial regime in reversing & destroying the massive Arab movements for democracy. Those reactionary regimes are US-European allies because neoliberal interests accord with their own: feudalism, sweatshop capitalism, & denial of all democracy.

The US & its allies in the Middle East are turning the region into a killing field–from Syria to Gaza to Yemen to the streets of Egypt. This man is searching for survivors in the rubble of a home destroyed by Saudi bombing in Sanaa, Yemen. We have witnessed this same carnage over & over again because war & bombing is the only way barbarism can impose its control.

Rebuilding the international antiwar movement & demanding the end of bombing, occupation, tyranny is the only way forward for humanity. It’s not a mission we can afford to blunder.

(Photo by Hani Mohammed/AP)

This photo is the apartheid wall at Qalandia, a village in the occupied West Bank near but not bordering Jerusalem. There is a large refugee camp built there in 1949 for Palestinians driven from their lands & homes by Zionist paramilitary squads. According to one UN statistic, over 10,000 people still live there.

The main Israeli military checkpoint for entering Jerusalem is at Qalandia & because it is such a nightmare of pedestrian & vehicular traffic, rubbish, & hassles from border guards, it is the scene of frequent Palestinian protests & altercations between frustrated Palestinians & aggressive border patrol. Today Mohammad Kosba, a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager was shot & killed by Israeli soldiers allegedly for throwing rocks at an Israeli military vehicle & denting it. There have reportedly been several violent altercations since Ramadan began which media has not reported–except those few instances where a Palestinian was the alleged perpetrator.

To cross, Israel requires Palestinians to have permits for work, medical care, education, or religious reasons. They abridged religious permits due to closing down Al-Aqsa mosque to males under 50 years old which is why there are many photos of young Palestinians queued up to scale ladders to cross the wall for prayers in the public streets surrounding Al-Aqsa. Israel took advantage of recent altercations to revoke permits for Palestinians living in the West Bank to visit family in Gaza & even further limit access to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Scaling the apartheid wall isn’t possible for elderly or infirm Palestinian men. These men are making their way to Al-Aqsa along the apartheid wall near Qalandia village.

Support religious freedom for Palestinians in occupied West Bank & build BDS, the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel.

(Photo by Alaa Badarneh/EPA)