In her Sept. 14 article, The New York Times’ Katrin Bennhold sanitizes the image of the Ansar Allah (Yemeni Houthi rebels) by using romanticized framing, ignoring their terror organization status, minimizing their violence and shifting blame for Yemen’s humanitarian crisis. In “What Do the Houthis Want?,” Bennhold woefully and dangerously downplays what it is exactly that the Houthis want.
The United States, along with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and entities like the Arab Parliament and the internationally recognized government of Yemen, have all designated the Houthis a designated terrorist organization. Ignoring the group’s terror designation, The Times describes the Houthis an “Iranian-backed militia” – the same language the paper uses for the Lebanese-based, billion-dollar, narco-terrorist group Hezbollah.
The Times does not mention Houthi links to Hezbollah and Iraqi militias, or the proven roles both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah in closely mentoring the Houthis and providing them with military support.
The Times also hides the Houthis’ extremist Islamist ideology. While the paper of record acknowledged the Houthis can be “incredibly brutal,” and shares with readers three-fourths of the Houthi slogan — a death wish on America and Israel and a curse upon all Jews — it omitted the fourth part: “Victory to Islam.”
The original Houthi leader, Hussein al-Houthi, who was killed in 2004, was inspired by the Iranian revolution and imported its ideals to Yemen. Hussein Al-Houthi’s lectures serve as the primary diet for Houthi indoctrination and center on prioritizing jihad against America and Israel.
Bennhold persists in her softened image of the terror group, calling the Houthis an “unlikely power [player]” who started out as a “ragtag” militia over 20 years ago. Perhaps The Times’ most understated and shocking minimization for the Houthis is the characterization of the terror group’s attacks on commercial shipping as a “headache” for the United States and the rest of the world. In its Red Sea attacks on more than 100 vessels, the Houthis sunk four ships, damaged dozens of others, killed nine sailors and kidnapped dozens.
In addition, she includes no mention of the Houthis’ approximately unprovoked 510 missile and UAV attacks on Israel, which injured 100 Israelis and caused at least one death during the Israel-Hamas war.
Characterizing the Houthis as “underdogs,” the paper begrudgingly acknowledges, “Yes, they’re a pariah group, under sanctions.” But The Times treats this status as a minor detail instead of a serious classification and avoids specifying the “terror” designation. The same paragraph promotes the Houthis as “provid[ing] relative security in their territory under one unified authority.”
Calling the Houthis “underdogs” and praising them for allegedly providing security to Yemenis is ludicrous and absurd. The terror group has a documented history of domestic abuses – including death, oppression and starvation – that it has orchestrated against its own people; none of which The Times saw fit to print.
Have the gay Yemenis sentenced to public execution, or the oppressed women, including those subjected to sexual violence (a fact which even the United Nations acknowledged), enjoyed “relative security” under Houthi rule? What about the hundreds of Yemenis who died as a result of the Houthis’ landmines, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and explosive ordnances?
While the paper described the humanitarian conditions in the Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen as “desperate,” there was no acknowledgment of the group’s prominent role in causing these conditions. For years, meant for civilian Yemenis (a playbook replicated by Hamas in Gaza). The Houthis also denied NGOs access to displaced persons camps and stole their assets, arbitrarily detained dozens of United Nations staff, and used diverted aid to recruit child soldiers from hungry families.
Meanwhile, The Times found only Saudi Arabia at fault for poor humanitarian conditions in Yemen, characterizing the Kingdom’s last war against the Houthis as a disaster, including “for humanitarian reasons.”
Rather than take the opportunity to explain who the Houthis are, what they stand for, and what they do, The Times instead said of the Houthis: “People all over the world are kind of fascinated by them.”
The Times’ sprightly, curious, and soft portrayal of a homicidal terrorist organization skews readers’ understanding of foreign policy and potential military intervention. In this profile, The Times has traded objective reporting for terror apologia, leading its audience to believe the Houthis are fascinating underdogs as opposed to anti-West, anti-Jewish, domestic abusers and jihadist killers.