Quick Thoughts: Laleh Khalili on Bab al-Mandab and Operation Prosperity Guardian

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Dec 21, 2023 Palestine
Houthi military helicopter flies over the Galaxy Leader cargo ship in the Red Sea in this photo released November 20, 2023. Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS Houthi military helicopter flies over the Galaxy Leader cargo ship in the Red Sea in this photo released November 20, 2023. Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS

Quick Thoughts: Laleh Khalili on Bab al-Mandab and Operation Prosperity Guardian

By : Laleh Khalili

[The Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, also known as the Houthis, recently escalated its intervention on behalf of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to include not only Israeli ships seeking to enter the Red Sea, but any ship docking at an Israeli port. The United States on 18 December announced Operation Prosperity Guardian with the objective of ensuring that the maritime chokepoint of Bab al-Mandab is open to all commercial shipping. Mouin Rabbani, Editor of Quick Thoughts and Jadaliyya Co-Editor, interviewed Laleh Khalili, author or Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula, to get a better understanding of the context and significance of this crisis]

Mouin Rabbani (MR): What is the significance of Bab al-Mandab to global trade and supply chains?

Laleh Khalili (LK): Bab al-Mandab at one end of the Red Sea is the gateway to the Suez Canal, the main maritime artery between Asia and Europe. Some twelve percent of global maritime trade travels on ships through the Canal, and the Canal cuts down the travel between those two continents by around two weeks. Perhaps more importantly, when fuel prices are relatively high, traveling through Suez cuts the cost of fuel required to ship cargo between Asia and Europe.

Ships on this route carry commodities from East Africa lifted on Red Sea ports; oil from the Gulf; products manufactured in China and elsewhere in Asia, including materials used in multi-sited manufacturing; as well as high-tech products, specialist chemicals used in manufacturing, and luxury goods shipped from Europe to Asia.

MR: What impact have Yemeni efforts to prevent the passage of Israeli ships, and more recently of any ships sailing to/from Israeli ports, had on Israel? What is Yemen's Ansar Allah movement seeking to achieve?

LK: It is difficult at this stage to assess the actual economic impact of this move. Eilat is not as significant a port as Israel's Mediterranean ports, and although some of the cargo from Asia would have gone through the Suez Canal to the major Israeli ports at Haifa or Ashkelon, the trade between Europe and Israel remains largely unaffected. The Houthi operations would have also affected the flow of oil to the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline; this oil is now largely provided by companies that are subsidiaries of firms based in Abu Dhabi and tied to the ruling Al-Nahyan family. For electricity generation Israel is reliant on the Mediterranean natural gas fields (sixty percent of its energy needs) and coal (thirty percent of its energy needs). According to the OECD, Israel imports its coal from Colombia, South Africa, and Russia. Although the first two of these have severed diplomatic relations with Israel, I suspect commercial contracts are still being fulfilled. 

Where the Houthi operations are far more significant is in the sphere of politics. The fact that a cost is extracted from Israel and from its major international supporters is a political victory for the Ansar Allah, who want to see Israel isolated. Israel wants to engage in its destruction of Palestinian lives, livelihoods and infrastructures while maintaining some degree of normality at home. These activities make this harder to achieve. 

MR: Given that attacks by Yemen's Ansar Allah are directed specifically at Israel, why are shipping companies whose ships are sailing to other destinations avoiding this route, and what is the impact of their decisions?  

LK: In part this is because shipping companies are not 100 percent certain about the parameters of Ansar Allah attacks: are these attacks against any shipping companies going through Bab al-Mandab, or against ships docking at Israeli ports? Though Ansar Allah have clearly declared their intent, this is a matter of concern for shipping companies. One thing that is important to note is that container ships very rarely carry cargo with only one destination. They often have clearly planned routes where they drop and lift cargo. So, for them, an interruption because of Israel is a disruption to their entire schedule.

Another factor to consider is the immediate increase in the cost of insuring cargo going through the Red Sea. Bloomberg has reported that war risk insurance had increased tenfold with the ramping up of Israeli violence against Palestinians in Gaza, and has during the past week quintupled again. This means that for a ship carrying $100 million worth of cargo, its voyage through the Suez Canal now requires a $500,000 premium.

This is all happening at a moment where the Panama Canal is also facing a crisis, as drought and lower water levels have made its lock system much harder to operate, and traffic through the Panama Isthmus has been drastically reduced to accommodate this climate disaster.

The combined effect of these developments, and especially of Ansar Allah operations is a slowing down of supply chains, with manufacturing in various corners of the world being dramatically affected, an increase in the price of cargoes of oil, and a threat of inflation.

MR: What is your assessment of Operation Prosperity Guardian? Is its objective to keep Bab al-Mandab open to Israeli shipping or does it have larger objectives? Has this initiative transformed the war on Gaza into an international and potentially global economic crisis? 

LK: Since 7 October, one aim of Netanyahu has been to expand the war regionally, to further ensnare the US in the region, to strike against Israel’s regional rivals, and to allow for Netanyahu to survive in his position for just that much longer. Operation Prosperity Guardian is I think the Pentagon’s attempt to assuage Israel and flex some proverbial muscle. But at this stage it is hard to see it being much more than that.  

The countries apparently participating in the task force include Britain, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, The Seychelles, and Spain. What is interesting about this list is not what it says but what it does not say. France already has a frigate in the Red Sea which is joining the task force. Italy has announced it is there to protect Italian shipping (and the world's largest shipping company, MSC, which is owned by an Italian family, though headquartered in Switzerland). Spain has said something noncommittal about operating only under the auspices of NATO. The Netherlands and Norway (both significantly dependent on maritime commerce) have sent 2 and 12 naval officers respectively. Bahrain is on the list because the US’s Combined Task Force 153 under whose banner Operation Prosperity Guardian is functioning is based on the island. The Seychelloise military leaders felt that they had to justify their presence by emphasising that they are billeting no men or women to the Operation, and are involved strictly as part of the Bahrain-based Task Force.

For the moment, Operation Prosperity Guardian seems to be more about theatre than about any active operations. Though given the freakish lack of strategic thinking in the US administration, this could change.

MR: Malaysia has recently closed its ports to Israeli shipping. Do you view this as related to developments in Yemen and what is its significance?

LK: Malaysia is a major maritime state. Its Port Klang and Tanjung Pelepas are respectively the twelfth and nineteenth most visited ports in the world. Its location astride the chokepoint of Malacca Straits makes it a very significant maritime transit route. It is important to note that an astonishing thirty percent of global trade goes through Malacca Straits. Because nearby Singapore is often very congested, many shipping companies have shifted their bunkering (refuelling) and crew-change operations to these Malaysian ports. Though Malaysia is probably not coordinating with Ansar Allah, it is nevertheless establishing its own distinct mode of diplomacy to isolate Israel and bring some pressure to bear. 
Dec 13, 2023 Lebanon
Yousef Munayyer By :
Yousef Munayyer

Quick Thoughts: Yousef Munayyer on Intifada Labeled as Hate Speech and Calls for Genocide

[On 5 December 2023, the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing they titled "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism." The hearing featured presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard, Elizabeth Magill of Penn, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT responding to a range of question. In what was a signature moment that revealed both the intention and approach of the hearing, committee member Congresswoman Elise Stefanik asserted that “the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the State of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews.” Such an assertion echoed broader attempt to recast Palestine solidarity in general and specific phrases and terms in particular as calls for “the genocide of Jews.” Ziad Abu-Rish, Jadaliyya Co-Editor, interviewed Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel program at Arab Center Washington DC, to learn more about when, how, and why such an attempt at reframing long-used terminology in the Palestine solidarity movement as “calls for genocide” are being deployed.]

Ziad Abu-Rish (ZAR): Before we talk about this particular moment and strategy, what can you tell us about the broader history of how terminology from Palestinian history and within the Palestine solidarity movement is understood or policed in the US context? 

Yousef Munayyer (YM): In a lot of ways, this is part of bigger processes that are simultaneously operating and have been for a very long time: (1) the dehumanization of Palestinians along the lines of longstanding colonialist tropes; and (2) the specific practice of deliberately mistranslating Palestinian/Arab/Muslim language and culture to suit racist agendas. A little on both of these things is in order. The first, the dehumanization of Palestinians, is not limited to Palestinians. Rather, it has operated for decades and falls along the lines of colonial tropes we are familiar with: They are barbaric; they are unreasonable; they are violent; and, most importantly, they are this way because of who they are. Thus, the only language they understand is force and ultimately they will benefit from our effort to civilize them. This logic is used to justify the worst atrocities. Second, the specific practice of mistranslating language and culture, is not new either. There is an entire genre of literature (if we must call it that) that can be summed up as non-Arabic speakers telling other non-Arabic speakers "the real meaning" of Arabic terms. 

Intifada is but one of these, but this also isn't limited to the Palestine context. Madrasa, Sharia, and more—there are many examples. Central to this practice is the belief that the sneaky and barbaric Arabic speakers conceal the true meanings of their language. This both reinforces and is reinforced by the first process we identified (i.e., longstanding and consistently operating colonialist tropes about the innate barbaric nature of the colonized). It is important to note that this is not limited to the mistranslation of language—it includes the mistranslation of culture.

ZAR: Could you give us a few examples?

YM: When Palestinian babies are martyred by Israeli bombs, the very concept of martyrdom is twisted by self-appointed mistranslators as a love of death or even a desire to seek death for propaganda purposes. Alternatively, when US television personality Rachael Ray, years ago, appeared in a Dunkin Donuts commercial wearing a paisley scarf, she attacked for supporting terrorism because her scarf looked like a kaffiyeh. The commercial was pulled.

Underlying all of this is the refusal to actually listen to Palestinians. There are always others who get to tell people what our words mean, what our culture means, what our vision is, etc. And this follows from the first process we discussed. Remember, the barbarians can't speak for themselves.

The very concept of barbarian comes to us from ancient Greeks who used the term to refer to non-Greek speaking people whose languages sounded like gibberish to them, bar-bar-bar. Inability, or unwillingness to understand the other’s language has always been tied to dehumanization.

ZAR: Is what happened in the Congressional hearing and the broader discussions parallel to it a direct continuity of these dynamics or something else more related to the current moment at play as well?

YM: There are much more proximate reasons that I will get into. But it is important to start with this history because it is this broader context that shapes and informs the strategy I am about to discuss. If I had to point to one key moment that is most important in recent years, it is the fall of 2015. This moment was a consequential one in Israeli government policy. 

For years, before this, the Israeli government was struggling to respond to dissent in global civil society against its treatment of Palestinians. It was much better at blowing up houses than destroying arguments against Apartheid. Israeli policymakers saw global civil society dissent growing and believed that their approach to dealing with it was failing and that they had to shift gears.

Israeli policymakers ultimately concluded that trying to defend their policies was not working. Importantly, they never concluded that this was because something was wrong with their policies, rather because something was wrong with dissenters. So they adopted a shift in policy that they referred to as moving "from defense to offense". In other words, instead of trying to defend their policy from global criticism, they adopted a policy of attacking the critics.

This policy shift was formalized into Israeli government machinery in the fall of 2015 with a mandate given to the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs. This agency's goal would be to figure out how to repress global activism. To do so, it partnered with a wide-ranging network of like-minded actors to advance repressive objectives, including things like anti-BDS laws in the United States and Europe. One of the problems they ran into, more in the United States than in Europe, was freedom of expression laws. In the United States this is the First Amendment, which is fairly robust. This was a problem for a couple of reasons. Along with anti-BDS laws getting successfully challenged in courts, the optics didn't help. It became counterproductive as even those who didn't necessarily care about Palestine still saw the repression effort as heavy-handed.

So how do you repress protected activity like speech and get around the First Amendment? The answer is: define the speech of those you are targeting as speech that doesn't merit protection (i.e., discriminatory or violence inciting speech). To do this, effectively and at scale, you need to institute a decoder—a framework that converts protected speech into non-protected speech. Enter the International Holocaust Remembrance Museum (IHRA) definition of Antisemitism.

Hegemonizing the IHRA definition became a major focus of the MSA and its network of partners, especially after 2019. Once institutions adopt the decoder, you can begin using it to demand enforcement. The specific examples included with the IHRA definition are vague enough as to potentially include all sorts of Palestinian expression and it enables smear campaigns that will keep mistranslators busy for a long time. There is no shortage of examples of how this alleged decoder can spin Palestinian speech into antisemitism. Let's deal with a few

Let's say you call for the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and villages. Since refugees returning would mean more Palestinians and less Jewish majoritarian control, that means you are denying the right of Jews to self-determination, therefore you can be accused of Antisemitism!     

Let's say you call for equality before the law in Israel so it could be a state of all its citizens. Since that would mean an end to privileging Jews over Arabs that means you are denying the right of Jews to self-determination, therefore you can be accused of Antisemitism! 

Let's say you call for an end to occupation, well now you are calling Jews occupiers in their homeland and therefore denying the right of Jews to self-determination, therefore you can be accused of Antisemitism!

Let's say you post a call for the Israeli government to be sanctioned for its human rights violations. Well, have you posted this for every country in the world? No, well that's a double-standard against Israel, therefore you can be accused of Antisemitism!

We can go on for a very long time, but readers get the point. The aim of this conversion device is to legitimize repression of dissent against Israel and to recruit, in the process, the law enforcement apparatuses of third countries to do the work.