For detractors like Mehdi Hasan and Cenk Uygur, even Islamist terrorists who have dragged their own country into a bloody civil war can be recast as a respectable government – so long as it helps them smear the Jewish state
September 1, 2025 16:06
Sometimes even the most expected reactions to an event can turn out to be interesting. And the reaction of the Israel haters to the IDF air strikes on the Houthis last week fall clearly into that category. There is nothing remotely unexpected about what the likes of Mehdi Hasan and Cenk Uygur had to say in response to the air strikes, but what they said confirmed what has long been obvious: that such is their overarching hatred of the world’s only Jewish state that it leads them to believe in fictions so obvious and demonstrable that they become incapable of rational thought when it comes to Israel.
To recap: on Thursday the IDF carried out a mission which had been dismissed as militarily impossible by many experts, and wiped out most of the key leaders of the Houthi terrorist organisation in Sanaa in north-western Yemen, including its self-styled prime minister, Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser al-Rahawi. Just as when the IDF destroyed the Iranian nuclear programme, Israel did what needed to be done, and it will have been thanked – albeit not literally – by its neighbours. The Houthis posed a threat not only to Israel but to the entire region.
But for Hasan and Uygur, this was a bad thing. Hasan posted on social that “Israel apparently can wipe out entire governments of Middle Eastern countries” while Uygur wrote: “Israel just murdered Prime Minister of Yemen and their entire cabinet. If anyone had done this to Israeli Prime Minister and Cabinet, they'd be considered by Western media as the worst terrorists in the world. So, what does that make Israel? They're obviously a terrorist state.”
As JC readers, you will be aware – as will anyone with even a passing knowledge of Yemen and the Houthis – that this is what is known as utter nonsense. The technical term is drivel. More formally it’s called pure rubbish. The Houthis are not the government of Yemen; that’s the entire point. They are an Islamist terrorist organisation which is seeking to control Yemen, and has seized territory in the north-west of Yemen. The actual Yemeni government is in Aden and is both recognised and supported by the UN.
It is possible of course that neither Hasan nor Uygur, nor any of the other self-proclaimed experts on the region, actually has even basic knowledge of Yemen and the Houthis, but have simply seized on what they see as an opportunity to have a go at Israel. That is their stock in trade even when it exposes their ignorance.
But I will credit them with some intelligence. I simply don’t see how anyone who looks at even just a few basic news reports - and even only from al Jazeera - can still be unaware of what is happening in Yemen. Which suggests an alternative explanation: that Hasan, Uygur et al know full well now that the Houthis are not the official government of Yemen and that Israel has taken out a bunch of terrorists, but that they are so consumed with hatred for Israel that they are willing – eager – to assert pure rubbish if it lets them attack Israel.
I say that they know it ‘now’, because my suspicion is that they knew nothing about the Houthis before October 7 2023. As Seth Frantzman has put it: “They were then operationalized, or self-operationalized to suddenly back a group they knew nothing about in a country they never heard about and couldn’t locate on a map; solely because the group claimed to be fighting Israel in the name of Gaza.” One might also ponder what it is about a group whose flag declares “curse on the Jews” that makes it attractive to some people.
There is a lesson here beyond support for the Houthis and ignorant social media posts about Yemen. It’s how drawn many of these ‘experts’ are to anything which paints Israel in a bad light or which implies Israel is struggling to defeat terror. Last week, for example, there was a sudden spate of social media posts on the day Israel began its offensive to take Gaza City, all of which reported the supposed news that Hamas had seized a number of IDF soldiers. As one wrote: “Probably fewer than ten. IDF protocol to prevent hostage taking is being undertaken right now. Rescue attempts have come under extreme fire. The IDF has put a gag order on this operation, so do not expect to see it in the Israeli media until morning there.:” Not a word of this was true or had any basis in fact. The reports were wrong in every respect. There was not a single source for any of them; the posts simply regurgitated each other. And they were posted – this is why they mattered – for no reason other than that it would be seen as a coup by Hamas to take new IDF hostages.
We have seen a variation on this dynamic from the mainstream media, such as when Israel was falsely accused of bombing Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on October 17 2023, through to the broader willingness to believe – and broadcast - claims about genocide and a policy of deliberate starvation without giving them, or the casualty and famine claims, any scrutiny.
Israel hasn’t helped in this regard, since it has been lamentably bad at providing both actual facts and push-back when such stories emerge. Instead, the floor has been left to Israel haters and those who are happy to repeat their claims to push whatever they want, no matter how baseless it may be.
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