There are International Rules of War ... and There are International Rules of Israeli War

"Once a city of 270,000 at the southernmost area of the [Gaza] Strip, Rafah has been the focus of intense combat at various times since October 7, 2023."

"Today, the city lies in ruins. Driving on a newly paved road -- in a convoy of military vehicles with heavy protection -- we passed through piles of twisted rebar, demolished buildings and rubble."

"The intact shell of one building stood, in stark contrast to the desolation."

"After about 15 minutes we arrived at our destination -- a massive humanitarian aid complex that was near completion. The Israel Defense Forces' international spokesman, Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani explained that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-based not-for profit, will operate the centre which will have the capacity to provide millions of meals daily to displaced civilians."

Vivian Bercovici, Israeli journalist 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to IDF troops in Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border, July 18, 2024. (Avi Ohayon/GPO

 

The location of which she writes is not far from the Egyptian border. Egypt, it should be noted, has recently accused Israel of committing 'genocide'. Egypt, it should also be noted, has steadfastly refused to open its border with Gaza to permit Palestinians fleeing the conflict in Gaza to enter the Sinai. Should that be interpreted as Egypt placing itself deliberately in a position of complicity in genocide? After all, Egypt, until it marched on Israel in 1967, occupied Gaza, and many Gazans of today trace their ancestry to Egypt.

 

Israel is now, once again, fighting for its existence. This time, not against the massed armies of its neighbours, but the terrorist groups that some of its neighbours in the Middle East have supported. Could an existential situation be more complex than that of Israel, when it has finally been able to sign peace treaties with some of its Arab neighbours, while the terrorist groups in Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza along with those in Iraq, all loyal to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and by extension Qatar, seek to demolish the Jewish state? 

 

In responding to the violently lethal threats of Iran's proxy militias and Iran itself, Israel risks alienating its Arab neighbours with whom it has signed those peace agreements. Egypt, a case in point, has assembled its military in large numbers along its border with Israel, as though it is preparing to launch a war against a neighbour it has long since pledged peace with. And nor is Israel's plight one restrained to the Middle East. Its Western allies in Europe and elsewhere now accuse it of disproportional force against its enemies. 

Palestinians carry humanitarian aid that they gathered after an aid drop, as they walk in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on August 18, 2025. (AFP)

 

These are death-cult Islamists whose charters declare their purpose is to destroy Israel and to kill Jews. In responding to the deadly attack of October 7, 2023, where thousands of terrorists crossed into southern Israel to rape and to maim, to plunder and to murder, Israel had little choice but to invade Gaza to hunt down Hamas's leaders and its operatives. In doing so, its northern border with Lebanon saw another terror group, Hezbollah, rain missiles down onto the Golan Heights at Israeli communities.

 

And before long, the Houthi terrorists in Yemen responded as well, attacking shipping in the Red Sea, asserting that any vessels with any connection to Israel would be targeted; in the process upsetting marine traffic internationally. Yet Israel's traditional allies, in the full knowledge that Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Iranian Republic use their own civilian populations as shields to protect the 'mujahadeen' from Israel's military responses to their attacks, focus on the plight of the civilian population in Gaza where a 'moral' military prewarns citizens of attacks and does its utmost to minimize civilian casualties.

 

Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty attends an Arab officials’ meeting in Riyadh on January 12, 2025. (Fayez Nureldine / AFP)

 

During an all-out conflict when a nation is forced to commit itself to a war against those who relentlessly and continually attack its citizens, the internationally acknowledged rules of war affirm that such a nation has the right to defend itself and its population and to counter-attack the offender out for its blood. By concealing themselves among the population for cover, and by using civilian infrastructure for command bases and by firing off missiles from launch sites deliberately placed in crowded civilian areas, Hamas has with intention, placed its civilian population in direct line of danger.

 

It uses the statistics it gathers on casualties among the civilian population, to convince the international community of Israel's intention to commit 'genocide', a charge that is not only a risible slander, but one that reality itself denies. What other country at war in the annals of international conflict through the ages has ever been expected to defend itself and obliterate an enemy sworn to its destruction, while also protecting a civilian population and to feed it, while its enemies are known to hijack humanitarian aid meant to avoid starvation among Gaza's civilians?

 

Hamas has in its possession, the remnants of 250 hostages it originally kidnapped from Israel and took to Gaza to torture and starve and even slaughter, because Jewish bodies, alive or dead are bargaining chips of great value to the Hamas terror machinery knowing full well that Israel attempts to move heaven and earth to rescue its people imprisoned in the underground hellscape of Gaza, including those held for ransom by Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who support the sadistic cruelty of their leaders in savaging Jewish lives.

 

 

"The Muwasi-adjacent site will be operated by GHF and offer ready access to food and other life essentials in a safe, controlled environment."

"Civilians will walk a 500-metre path, flat and secure, far from Hamas fighters or criminal gangs."

"Once inside the complex they will receive food aid to last several days and within minutes return to their temporary shelters in Muwasi."

"To avoid panics and crowd surges the centre would be operational 24/7 if necessary and supplies will be delivered by truck using the same road we took. At a minimum, basic life necessities will be available."

Vivian Bercovici, Israeli journalist 

Israel's Relentless Drive to Destroy Hamas

"It is time for the countries of the world to take seriously our unwavering commitment to bring back all our hostages home and defeat the enemy."

"Nothing will stop us from fighting to free our hostages, who have been held in brutal Hamas captivity for 527 days."

"We will show no mercy against our enemies while our hostages languish in Hamas terror tunnels."

Danny Danon, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations

Israeli troops in southern Gaza. Pic: IDF handout

Extensive strikes have been conducted against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military on Monday, negating a ceasefire that had exacerbated the pain of Israel's hostage families in the terrorists' hollow gestures of complying with the rules of hostage return while mocking the process as a generous gesture on the part of the Palestinian terrorists. The 'ceasefire' that had given Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other such groups the opportunity to recruit, rearm and reaffirm their ironclad intention to continue planning and executing attacks on Israel for which the October 7, 2023 invasion and savagery remains their model.

 

In essence, the 'ceasefire' had ended itself when Israeli intelligence analyzed the intention of Hamas leaders to carry on with their death mission for Israel, leading to the inescapable conclusion that the only fitting response to the situation would be a return to Israel's original goal of wiping out the entirety of the Hamas organization; fighters, leaders, weapons stocks, organizational capability. The essentially vital target, the removal of the Hamas leadership.

 

To that end, it was confirmed by the Israel Defense Forces that "the Hamas prime minister and a senior government figure in the Gaza Strip", Essam al-Dalis was among a number of senior terrorists eliminated in the early stages of the campaign. As is usual for the IDF, a vital warning had been issued Tuesday urging residents of Gaza within specific areas to immediately evacuate, as the Israeli forces' operations intensified. 

Civilians were called  upon by IDF spokesperson Avichay Adrace, to relocate to designated shelters located in western Gaza City and Khan Yunis to avoid becoming casualties of the attacks. Citing local Gaza health officials, the Associated Press reported that over 400 Palestinians had been killed in the overnight airstrikes. No one can actually be assured of the veracity of any such claims made by either Hamas or any of its operating arms. Hamas, in any event, reporting on casualties makes no differentiation between civilians and its terrorist operatives.

 

Pic: IDF handout

"[An Israeli official] claimed that in recent days during the ceasefire Hamas has been preparing to carry out new attacks against Israel and has taken steps to rearm."

"The official said the IDF kept the operational plan top secret and within a relatively small circle in order to surprise Hamas."

Axios Report

 

"[The IDF is] attacking targets of the Hamas terrorist organization throughout the Gaza Strip in order to achieve the objectives of the war as they have been determined by the political echelon including the release of all of our hostages, the living and the deceased."

"Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office statement

The attack coincided with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Somewhat similar to Egypt and Syria attacking Israel in 1973 on Yom Kippur, the Judaic holy Day of Atonement. There is an interpretation that this could signal a full resumption of the war, incited by Hamas when terrorists invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, thousands of terrorists primed to enact a scene straight out of Hell, complete with mass rape, mutilation, torching of family homes with the residents huddled for safety in their 'safe rooms', where the mostly civilian population of southern Israel's farming kibbutzim were targeted for annihilation.

 

Hamas terrorists stand in formation ahead of a hostage release in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Feb. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Hamas's plans included the hostage-taking of families, the elderly, infants, teens, women, foreign farm workers and Israeli soldiers. Even the dead were considered useful pawns as hostages, bundled off with the terrified living hostages to the extensive tunnel systems of Gaza, to be confined in dark, dank underground cells without natural light, breathing foetid air, and experiencing a lack of adequate food and water and medical supplies. The remaining two dozen hostages believed to still be alive, remain in terrorist hands.

 

"We are shocked, angry and terrified by the deliberate dismantling of the process to return our loved ones from the terrible captivity of Hamas", mourned the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. And one can only commiserate with their anguish, hoping against hope that their loved ones will somehow be returned to them. Hamas enjoys its sadistic cat-and-mouse games with vulnerable and helpless captives.

 

While the United States and Israel have been stepping up attacks across the region this week, the retaliatory campaign against Hamas is being carried out with a view to bringing Israel's goal of eradicating the terrorist group entirely, closer to accomplishment as an end-game goal. In concert with the U.S. launching strikes against Yemen's Houthis spurred on by Iran, Israel has targeted Iran's terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Syria.

 

Israeli soldiers patrol a street in northern Gaza on Wednesday. The Israeli military launched a new ground offensive in Gaza, a day after Israel 'broke a ceasefire' with a punishing series of airstrikes. Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

"[U.S. President Donald Trump] has made it clear: Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America will see a price to pay."

"All hell will break loose."

"[All of] the terrorists in the Middle East [should take Trump] very seriously when he says he is not afraid to stand for law-abiding people ... and our friend and ally Israel."

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt

Beating Iran at its Terrorist-Enabling Game

"The Hamas battle is a relatively minor theatre in the larger war waged by Iran."

"Until you deal with the Iran question, Middle East peace and stability in the wider world will be increasingly disrupted by Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in the failed state of Lebanon, the Houthi war in Yemen and the ongoing mass murders carried out by the Assad regime in Syria."

"We already have a revolutionary movement in Iran that wants to topple the regime."

"What the west needs to do is help that revolutionary movement. What is needed is several lines of support to destabilize the situation inside the country. Funding, training, organizing the opposition so they can work together and topple the regime."

"If we're serious about solving all these problems, the answer is you need a change of regime in Tehran."

You have a population in the country that wants democracy and is open to the west and is open to Israel. Let's make use of this incredible resource that's at our disposal. The people in the streets of Iran are not equivocating. They want this regime gone."

Kave Shahrooz, Iranian-Canadian human rights jurist, democracy activist

Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israel just within the six weeks since Hamas and Islamic Jihad invaded Israel. Only now that the Israel Defense Forces is destroying the capacity of the terrorist organization in Gaza, the rockets have diminished in number from the previous 100 daily to under 20 every day. But then, other rockets, far more sophisticated and powerful ones supplied by Iran to the Ansarullah Houthi regime in Sanaa, Yemen is sending its drones, rockets and missiles into Israel.

 

Yemen's Ansarullah group staged a military parade in late September to showcase several new types of Iranian cruise missiles and ballistic missiles recently acquired from the Islamic Republic of Iran to their protegees. Precision-guided liquid-propellant "Toufan" missiles with a range potential of up to 1,950 kilometres that brings the Red Sea port Israeli city of Eilat within striking range.

Israeli fighter jets and the country's Arrow air defence system intercepted several Ansurallah barrages of surface-to-surface missiles and drones; none of the attacks have yet managed to penetrate Israeli airspace. American warships in the Red Sea also have come under attack by drones launched from Yemen. Skirmishes with Iran's Hezbollah proxy terror group on Israel's northern border have been increasing. Airstrikes from Israel have responded to the Hezbollah rockets. 

Israel plans to maintain its focus on Gaza, but the prospect of a wider war initiated by Iran appears on the horizon. Hezbollah is in possession of a substantial arsenal, equal to that of a dozen UN member-states. In 2007 Hezbollah's weapons cache consisted of some 15,000 medium-range sophisticated missiles. At present, despite Israeli airstrikes on missile shipments going through from Syria to bases in Lebanon have allowed Hezbollah to stockpile 150,000 rockets and missiles; 400 long-range missiles.

Iran's Quds Force has been exerting influence in Syria in support of Bashar al Assad over the past three years, augmenting Iranian militias in Iraq, in a chain of command. Assad's military and security services now are supplemented by Shia militias faithful to Iran. Iran's armed groups in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, have recruits from Afghanistan and Pakistan, numbering in total some 250,000 fighters.

A lot of manoeuvering and consolidation has taken place in the six weeks since Hamas invaded Israel with its barbaric terrorist slaughter of 1,200 civilians and abduction of some 239 Israeli children, women, the elderly and foreign agricultural workers into Gaza. Matters are proceeding precisely as the Islamic Republic has planned and there is obviously more, much more to come.

 

Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, an Iraqi militia trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards  Tasnim News Agency

 

Iran is recognized internationally as the world's foremost sponsor of terrorist groups, ever since power was seized by Khomeini in 1979. Partially enabled by the policy approach of the Obama administration, then reconstituted with Joe Biden's inauguration; a policy viewing the Khomeinist regime's presence as a "balance" to the major Arab states in the Middle East. A geopolitical arrangement Barack Obama attempted to secure through a nuclear-weapons agreement.

Rapprochement, he was certain, would become his foreign policy legacy, moving him to allow Bashar al Assad to cross the "red line" with chemical weapons use in the Syrian Arab Spring uprising of Sunni Syrians against the Alawite-Shia-Baathist dictatorship. 1,400 civilians were slaughtered in 2013 in Eastern Ghouta and Moudamiyat al-Cham, by sarin gas. Obama failed to act, under Iran's threat to leave the nuclear talks.

Conflict-resolution specialist Robert Malley was the architect of the Obama strategy and he was reinstated by President Biden, to revive the Obama plan. Until Malley's security clearance was revoked pending an FBI probe into classified intelligence that was shared with Tehran. Then the eruption of a scandal when Tehran's "Iran Experts Initiative" infiltrated senior policy-making circles in Washington.

Long story short, the United States would do well to abandon the intention to have a partnership with the Khomeinist regime in nuclear containment, or indeed any issue whatever. According to Kaveh Shahroz, Iranian-Canadian human rights and democracy activist, a fortuitous alliance of helpfulness with Iran's dissidents should enable Iranians themselves to target Tehran to dispose of the terrorist-enabling regime.

U.S. Institute of Peace, Woodrow Wilson Center

"Hamas is backed by Iran. Hezbollah is backed by Iran. The Houthis are backed by Iran. All roads in this war lead back to Iran and the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend on these terror groups in the region to help them terrorize Israel and extend their hegemony throughout the region."

Iran's so-called supreme leader applauded Hamas for its horrifying October 7 attacks that targeted innocent Israeli civilians."

"Iran's shadow war with Israel is stepping into the sunlight, and Iran must be sanctioned. That starts with listing the IRGC as a terrorist entity and the total isolation of Iran within the international community."

Shimon Koffler Fogel, chairman, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

Lessons From the Mandate of the International Criminal Court in the Hague

 Dominic Ongwen,  Photo ICC-CPI /via REUTERS

"Abductees were beaten for walking too slowly. One abductee was forced to kill another abductee with a club and forced to inspect corpses. Another abductee was forced to watch someone being killed. Some mothers were forced to abandon their children on the side of the road; one child was left on a rubbish pit."

"Civilians were shot, burned and beaten to death. Children were thrown into burning houses, some were put in a polythene bag and beaten to death."

Presiding Judge Schmittm International Criminal Court ruling against LRA ex-commander Dominic Ongwan

 

"[The Court] took the unprecedented step of reading out the names of a number of individual victims [of Ongwen's and the LRA's crimes]."

"While this case is important, redress must extend to the thousands of victims of the LRA's abductions, killings and mutilations, who still have not seen justice for the harms they have suffered."

Seif Magango, Amnesty's deputy director, East Africa, the Horn and Great Lakes

 

"I was abducted like Ongwen too, but he was a commander in the LRA, so he should be given the maximum sentence, considering what they did to me and lots of children from this region. The ruling today has touched me very much."

"When I was taken in 1996, I was two months' pregnant. We walked for hours between the border with Uganda and Sudan. Along the way, the rebels asked if any of us had an issue that meant we couldn't continue on the journey. I put my hand up."

"The commander asked the young soldiers to beat us with sticks. They said they would have to kill one of us that day, to discourage the young ones from trying to escape. They beat me all over the stomach and chest."

Former abductee

Thursday's ruling in The Hague was watched live by people in Gulu - not far from the Lukodi refugee camp   AFP

ICC Trial Chamber IX, composed of Judge Bertram Schmitt, Presiding Judge, Judge Péter Kovács and Judge Raul Cano Pangalangan, analysed the evidence submitted and discussed before it at trial and found, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Mr Ongwen is guilty of the following crimes:

1. attacks against the civilian population as such, murder, attempted murder, torture, enslavement, outrages upon personal dignity, pillaging, destruction of property and persecution; committed in the context of the four specified attacks on the Internally Displaced Persons camps ("IDP camps") Pajule (10 October 2003), Odek (29 April 2004), Lukodi (on or about 19 May 2004) and Abok (8 June 2004);

2. sexual and gender based crimes, namely, forced marriage, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enslavement, forced pregnancy and outrages upon personal dignity he committed against seven women (whose names and individual stories are specified in the judgment) who were abducted and placed into his household;

3. A number of further sexual and gender based crimes he committed against girls and women within the Sinia brigade, namely forced marriage, torture, rape, sexual slavery and enslavement; and

4. The crime of conscripting children under the age of 15 into the Sinia brigade and using them to participate actively in hostilities.

Kidnapped around the age of 14, convicted Lord's Resistance Army ex-commander Dominic Ongwen, grew to adulthood from his teen years entirely immersed in a child-and-human-rights-abusive environment whose purpose was to extract any possible measure of empathy and compassion from child abductees and to ensure they were entirely committed to the Lord's Resistance Army values and culture whose foundation was that of cruelty, anti-humanism and murder for profit in their reign of terror in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan.

 

When he is eventually sentenced, it will likely be for the maximum punishment for his crimes totalling thirty years' incarceration. The death penalty is not an option for sentencing with the International Criminal Court in the Hague. This man, now 40 years of age, was exposed as a child to the dehumanization of the terrorist group that saw fit to traumatize children they abducted, submitting them to a 're-education' in the realities of brutality and utter lack of empathy. He was ripped apart from his family and soon learned what was expected of him if he was to survive his initial captivity.

 

Subjected to death or mutilation by refusing the orders to harm others, he learned to commit acts of depraved brutality without compunction. The LRA promoted those children who proved themselves capable of the most violent behaviour and total compliance with orders to commit atrocities; the choice given them to either comply or face death themselves; survival meant becoming a working part of a LRA unit. Rising in the ranks of the LRA Dominic Ongwen perpetrated the same conscienceless brutality on children he abducted as was done to him.

It was not unusual for abducted children trained to survive by responding with alacrity to brutal orders, to have to prove their loyalty to the LRA by committing murder on demand, even murdering members of their own family. They were subjected to gang rape, used as human shields, placed front and centre in combat situations. LRA leader Joseph Kony led children to believe in his magical powers, his capacity to read minds, convincing them he knew their every thought and if those thoughts included escape, he would know.

Iranian child 'martyr'

The Lord's Resistance Army is in no way exceptional in its use of children in war situations. The Islamic Republic of Iran infamously sent tens of thousands of Iranian children to their deaths using their bodies to absorb the detonation of mines laid by the Iraq military during the Iran-Iraq war, so that the Iranian military could then flood the cleared minefields to attack their enemy. The children were assured they would go straight to Paradise, each of them wearing a 'key' to unlock the portals of Paradise.

 

Palestinian youths march during a military style exercise run by Hamas during a scouting summer camp next to the border between Egypt and Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Adel Hana/AP

 Palestinian boy in the Gaza Strip.

Abid Katib/Getty Images

Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, operate training camps in military exercises for Palestinian children in Gaza. The children are taught how to handle weapons, and how to produce elementary incendiary devices . They are taught from an early age that Israelis and Jews are their enemies and that the object of military training is to enable them to kill Jews and destroy Israel whose heritage land Palestinians claim as their own. This obvious child abuse is well known, yet Hamas, as a terrorist group whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and whose incitements to violence against Jews is well known, appears to be of no interest to the International Criminal Court as a potential for prosecution in a court of justice.

The Yemeni Houthis, clients of the Islamic Republic of Iran, considered by many countries to be a terrorist group, which has unseated the duly elected government in Yemen and seized a good part of its territory, also trains young boys for fighting, accustoming them to the use of firearms, and preparing them to take their place on the battlefield, using them as front-line shields just as their sponsors, the Iranian Republic did with their vulnerable young.

 

Kahlan, a 12-year-old former child soldier, demonstrates how to use a weapon, at a camp for displaced persons where he took shelter with his family, in Marib, Yemen in this July 27, 2018 photo.

Yet with all of this, on Friday the International Criminal Court in the Hague announced that it was prepared to launch a war crimes investigation against Israel. In a majority ruling following a six-year review by the chief prosecutor, the ICC judges made the announcement that "The Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine... extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem." 

 

Bearing in mind that the 'occupation' is in reality a military situation forced upon Israel for self-protection by the violently hostile actions of the Fatah and Hamas Palestinian groups intent on destroying Israel. These, however, are irritating facts the ICC has no use for.

 

Presiding Judge Robert Fremr in the courtroom at the ICC (International Criminal Court) in the Hague, the Netherlands, 2018    (photo credit: BAS CZERWINSKI/POOL VIA REUTERS)

It's The Arab Culture

"It's not about us -- we have no power to stop this war. Even if the international community ... provides millions of dollars, Yemen will not recover unless the war stops."
"It's so painful to see hopeless families. I've met some who are all infected with cholera or other diseases. Can you imagine a father, whose eight children who are infected and he is so poor?"
"People are very pessimistic. I think we will be neglected slowly by the international community and the world."
Sadeq Al-Ameen, aid worker, Sanaa, Yemen

"We're looking for this simple, over-arching narrative and this idea of a proxy war is something people can understand -- group X backs these guys and group Y backs these guys."
"The reality is you've got a multiplicity of different groups, each with different agendas working and fighting on the ground against one another." 
"They've gone from literally 25 guys in the mountains 13 years ago to thousands if not tens of thousands of men operating on the ground in control of all these resources. They're being told, you're on the back foot and it's time to give up, which to my mind if you look at their history, their trajectory, it just doesn't compute."
"Lots of different groups control lots of different parts of the country and that control allows them to tax trade. We end up in this situation where it becomes self-fuelling, where guys who have taken up arms, maybe for ideological reasons, maybe for local politics, now have money and power they didn't have before the war ... They're not being talked to, so what incentive do they have to give up their arms and newfound resources and power?
"The lesson the Saudis have learned is that they can get away with a great deal when it comes to Yemen. They can really do things that if another country were doing it in another context there would be international outcry, there would be action at the Security Council level, but in this case that's just not happening because of the value western and other states place on their relationship with Saudi Arabia."
Peter Salisbury, Chatham House paper author

"I do think Syria has exhausted resources, personal and governmental. I'm not surprised given the extent of the war there."
"But I also think if Yemen preceded Syria, nothing would change. Yemen is jut not a country that western nations and peoples think of -- hardly on their radar."
Kamal Al-Solaylee, Yemen born, Toronto author, professor

A child in Yemen     CBS News

The war in Yemen is indeed a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, one an Arab state the other Aryan, both Muslim-majority countries, the former Sunni, the latter Shiite. Saudi Arabia views itself as a leading power in the Middle East, not least because it is the custodian of the two most sacred sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina. The challenge by Iran which imagines itself once again reflecting influence and power from the historical era of the Persian Empire threatens the eminence of the Saudi majority in the Middle East -- and world wide which consider Shia Islam illegitimate.

Since 1979 and the transformation of Persian Iran into the Islamic Republic it is now, modernity and moderation have taken a back seat to the fundamentalist Ayatollahs' mission to assume the mantle of the Middle East power and influence, to bring Shia Islam to the fore and to achieve that goal it has gone out of its way to form, train and arm Shiite militias, to support what are undeniably terrorist groups, to launch terrorist attacks against perceived enemies both in the Middle East and abroad while enlarging its sphere of influence.

Iran's mission to arm its military with medium- and long-range ballistic missiles, its steady work toward manufacturing nuclear bombs and its overt hostility toward the majority Arab Sunni community hugely alarms that community, no less than it does the only other non-Arab state in the Middle East, Israel. The threats emanating from Iran toward Israel, to wipe it from the map of the Middle East are overt, while the threats against the Sunni states are covert and implied, but no less real.

The Yemeni Houthi rebels practise a brand of Shia Islam linking them to Iran, which has encouraged the Houthis to overwhelm the Western- and Saudi-approved Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who took the helm of Yemen after the Arab spring 2011 protests rid the country of Ali Abdullah Saleh, an autocratic ruler not beloved by his people, similar to what had occurred in Tunisia. But the Houthis aligned themselves with Saleh, attacking the capital and wresting it from the Hadi government.

The rise of the Houthis as a rebel group with a fierce fighting reputation is similar in type to that of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant; while one is Shiite, the other Sunni, each was a persecuted minority in their countries ruled by a sectarian majority. Saudi Arabia gathered a coalition of Sunni states to launch a war against the Houthis to return their candidate to power though it is mostly Saudis bombing Yemen to achieve that end. And more refugees are added to the world total, an amazing number of which are of Arab origin.

Yemeni refugees in a Djbouti refugee camp    CBS News

And if the observation has been made that the Saudis can get away with bombing a poor country like Yemen, helping to cause a downspiral of food scarcity, medical impoverishment and an out-of-control cholera epidemic where disease and starvation stalk the country, this immunity from blame and lack of censure from the United Nations sees a complementary version in the Palestine Liberation Organization which incites Palestinians to violence against Israeli Jews, and consistently refuses to work toward a settlement with Israel leading to peace.

As long as it is sectarian Islam in conflict with itself the 57-member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation will do nothing, say nothing, fail to apply pressure on either Iran or Saudi Arabia to cease and desist and allow Yemen to save itself from even greater destabilization if such a thing is even remotely possible. This is the Arab and Muslim world, after all. It is not only the Houthis who are in conflict against their sectarian rivals in Yemen, for al-Qaeda and Islamic State have also positioned themselves there, all jostling to achieve their own goals.