The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement on Thursday sternly condemning President Joe Biden for approving airstrikes against the Houthi jihadist terror organization of Yemen, accusing him of “unnecessarily, illegally and dangerously risking the loss of more innocent lives.”
“We fail to understand why President Biden would rather risk a regional war by bombing Yemen instead of simply stopping the Gaza genocide that is fueling conflict across the world,” Nihad Awad, the executive director of CAIR, asserted.
United States Central Command (CENTCOM) and the British Defense Ministry confirmed the execution of dozens of strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen between Thursday and Friday, intended to neutralize the terrorist organization’s ability to disrupt international commercial shipping passing through the Red Sea.
U.S. and U.K. carry out airstrikes in Yemen: An RAF FGR4 Typhoon takes off from Royal Air Force (RAF) Akrotiri military airbase in Greek Cypriot to conduct its mission against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen on January 12, 2024 (UK Ministry of Defence/Anadolu via Getty Images).
“Today, at my direction, U.S. military forces—together with the United Kingdom and with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands—successfully conducted strikes against a number of targets in Yemen,” Biden said in a statement following the strikes, “used by Houthi rebels to endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most vital waterways”:
The Houthis, who are not the legitimate government of Yemen, declared war on Israel to support Hamas following the invasion of Israel on October 7 and has aided the Sunni jihadist group by attacking commercial vessels passing through the region. The attacks have had a chilling effect on ship traffic through the Bab el-Mandab Strait near Yemen, triggering a 90 percent drop year-on-year in ship traffic in the region between January 2023 and January 2024.
This photo shows Houthi forces boarding the cargo ship Galaxy Leader on Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023. Yemen’s Houthis have seized the ship in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen after threatening to seize all vessels owned by Israeli companies (Houthi Media Center via AP).
A Houthi spokesman had confirmed the group’s resolve to continue attacking ships in the region in statements published on Wednesday – while simultaneously claiming the United States was “misleading the world about dangers threatening international navigation in these seas.”
“More killing is not the solution to this crisis. Ending Netanyahu’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza and securing a just, lasting peace by ending the occupation is the solution,” Awad, the head of CAIR, the largest Muslim advocacy group in the United States, said in his statement.
“This president is unnecessarily, illegally and dangerously risking the loss of more innocent lives – including the lives of Americans – for the sake of the genocidal Israeli government, all without approval from Congress,” Awad’s statement continued:
CAIR is planning an event in Washington, DC, on Saturday in opposition to Israel’s self-defense operations against Hamas in the aftermath of the October 7 invasion. The event is scheduled to include remarks from two presidential candidates running against Biden – Jill Stein and Cornel West – in addition to other high-profile radical leftists.
The Houthis attempted to violently seize power against the legitimate government of Yemen in 2014, triggering a civil war that remains ongoing to this day, though the Houthis control most of the country. They are an Iran-backed Shiite operation whose slogan is “Allahu Akbar, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.”
Yemen’s Houthi loyalists take part in an armed parade for more than 20,000 members who have finished a military course, staged to show their willingness to battle any potential attack by the recently created coalition by the U.S., on December 20, 2023, in Amran province, Yemen. Yemen’s Houthi movement leader has warned that they would attack US ships in the Middle East if Washington waged war against them (Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images).
The Houthi terror organization, which calls itself Ansarullah, dramatically increased its ability to obtain funding in early 2021 after the inauguration of President Biden, whose administration removed them from the State Department’s list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The removal allowed for hundreds of millions of dollars in “humanitarian aid” to pour into Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen, including from the U.S. government.
Houthi leaders became involved in the conflict between Hamas and the Israeli government in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, in which Hamas terrorists stormed Israel and engaged in door-to-door raids on random families, killing babies, gang raping and executing women, torturing victims, and desecrating their corpses. The terrorists filmed many of their atrocities to share on social media, uploading videos of the bodies of their victims to the victims’ social media accounts. Israeli officials estimated Hamas killed 1,200 people and maintain more than 120 hostages in Gaza.
CAIR and its affiliates have enthusiastically opposed Israeli operations to prevent another attack. On October 7, the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), an umbrella organization including CAIR, published a statement condemning “the recent unprovoked and continuous attacks by Israel on Palestinian towns, cities, and refugee camps.”
“We condemn Israel’s targeted and indiscriminate killing of civilians, including innocent children, women, and the elderly, and we denounce the inhumane siege imposed on the nearly 2 million inhabitants of Gaza,” the statement read, “a clear violation of international law and an implied declaration of open war on the Palestinians which oblige them to be in constant self-defense.”
CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding operation.