According to
UN estimates, 17 million Yemenis, more than 60% of the population, are in urgent need of food. Out of these, 7 million are facing famine. The destruction of infrastructure has also left 15 million without any access to
healthcare and generated an unprecedented cholera outbreak, with 900.000 cases and thousands dead already. 50.000 Yemeni
children have died in 2017 as a result of disease and starvation. There is no hyperbole needed, this is a humanitarian disaster that is beyond words. Only it is not a natural catastrophe. More than something that is being allowed to happen, it is something that is being deliberately imposed on the Yemeni people.
As the Syrian army moved to re-take eastern Aleppo, a monumental PR campaign saw people who had never bothered before rise up from their Starbucks couches to proclaim that humanity had lost its ways.
One day, hopefully, people will wonder how large swaths of western public opinion were manipulated into working in a propaganda stunt to defend a city held by al-Qaida (1). Months earlier we were bombarded by the media about the siege of Madaya, where 40.000 people were being starved to death
(2). Yet now, with an entire country on the
brink of famine, the media silence is telling.
Anyone can voice their horror at a hospital being bombed in Syria. The issue here is not one of comparing tragedies and demanding proportional levels of outrage.
The issue is that the West is directly responsible for the tragedy in Yemen. Western companies supply the weapons, western military advisors are involved in the intelligence work and the selection of targets, US airplanes are refuelling Saudi (and coalition) jets as they carry out their savage bombings in Yemen. The supposed outrage is not connected to any concern for human rights, it is merely a foreign policy propaganda trick. And the main priority for people in the west should be to stop the crimes being committed, or abetted, by their own governments.
There is no point in invoking this or that convention, because all western governments and weapons manufacturers will claim that they do not sell weapons if they end up being used to commit human rights violations. But there is overwhelming evidence that war crimes are being committed left and right, from
double-tap strikes to bombings of
hospitals,
schools, or even
funerals, and nobody has suggested putting the brakes on this money train of weapons sales. Evidence of war crimes will be either ignored or, as British Foreign Secretary
Boris Johnson suggested, left to the Saudis themselves to
investigate!