Pending global threats from the Israel-Hamas war that are not being aired in Western media just yet

During my interview yesterday morning with WION, India’s premier English-language global news service, I was given the opportunity to expand upon the latest development in the southern sector of the Red Sea, namely the seizure by a Houthi (Yemen) attack force of a merchant vessel partly owned by Israelis. As I commented, Russian news tells us that the capabilities of Yemen to create havoc with global shipping through the Suez Canal and Red Sea are vastly underappreciated and underreported at present. Despite its figuring in world news these past several years for a murderous civil war fed by the Saudis, and besides its being considered the poorest nation among the Arab countries of the Middle East, Yemen has a 30 million population and, according to Russia, a very strong arsenal of ship-sinking missiles with 2,000 km range that they themselves manufacture.  If there is no other lever to stop the Israeli rampage, it is certainly credible that the Yemenis will attack global shipping routes.

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In short, war today is not what it used to be just a couple of decades ago.  Hamas, with a military budget of perhaps 80 million euros annually and Hezbollah with a budget just several times greater can pose a grave threat to Israeli armor with improvised drones dropping mines on tanks and personnel carriers and to its civil infrastructure using their missiles. Now Yemen enters the fray with a capability of disrupting global logistics.

Twenty years ago when Bush, Jr unleashed his War on Terror, all the talk of global security experts was about the threat to the status quo posed by “non-state actors” operating with paltry funds.  Now the art of war has progressed to the point where non-state actors can stand up to the mightiest high budget state armies like Israel and its 20 billion dollar war budget.  The Netanyahu cabinet seems not to have taken in the significance of this change, whereas the Kremlin absorbed the lesson quickly during its war with Ukraine and is now very proficient at pursuing its objectives on the battlefield in the age of kamikaze and reconnaissance drones.

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Otherwise, I was particularly pleased to have discussed with the moderator the peculiar positioning of major Western broadcasters like CNN and the BBC these past few weeks in what is objectively support for the Palestinian cause and censure of Israel over its prevarication and outrageous propaganda.  Specifically at issue was the attempt of Israeli military spokesman one day ago to present CCTV videos from the admissions area of the Al Shifa hospital as proof of the facility’s being used as a containment area for hostages. This material obviously did not pass the proof test of the broadcasters and was not presented even while it floated through social media and reached the pages of The New York Times.

As the presenter concluded from my remarks, there has been a sharp disconnect between what the broadcasters have been saying on air and what their governments are doing by their full backing of Netanyahu.

However, I am obliged to say that this disconnect is now under threat.  Yesterday morning’s BBC News already desisted from its at length imagery of the war’s impact on Palestinian civilians and especially on the hospitals; instead a lengthy feature report was aired on how one 18-year old Ukrainian boy was repatriated to Ukraine after having been abducted by Russian forces at the start of the Special Military Operation in what the Russians say was an effort to save abandoned children caught in the war zone. The old broken record on Russian atrocities is being rolled out to replace the reportage on Israeli atrocities where possible.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023