Eid in the grip of the Houthis

Eid is a time of joy around the world, when people gather around a table of giving and love, hearts embrace, and homes are filled with a spirit of celebration. But in Yemen, the Houthis have turned Eid into a season of looting and plunder, a season of imposing taxes by force of arms, in an attempt to humiliate and exhaust the people.

While the people are starving, every door is being knocked on, not to offer greetings, but to force every individual to pay a sum of money under the name of "zakat," which is no longer a religious ritual, but rather a coercive tool to enrich the ruling class and finance the machine of war and destruction.

The Houthis have lost any trace of religious or humane values. They have crushed all ties of life, torn apart blood ties, and stripped themselves of any sense of belonging, stripping themselves of everything that makes a human being human. They were not just an invader, but a rabid monster who invaded a land they had known only as an arena of plunder and power. They assumed the image of kinship when they wanted to steal, then stripped themselves of it when they decided to kill. They treated the people as spoils brought to them by fate, and proceeded to dig their claws into the flesh of the homeland, devouring its children with a historical voracity, relishing the rituals of plunder and slaughter as if they were an extension of a heritage steeped in filth.

Every year, the Houthis devise new ways to plunder citizens. They impose tax lists based on religious affiliations, extort merchants, impose taxes on markets, and force shopkeepers to pay huge sums under the pretext of supporting the "war effort." They even plunder qat sellers and extort even those who have only their daily bread. There is no difference between rich and poor; in their eyes, everyone is merely a source of income, mere prey in their parasitic economy, which survives only on exploitation.

The Houthis only remember religion when they reach into the pockets of Yemenis, when they want to scoop up their sweat, when they lick their labors with their greedy tongue. Only then does he cloak himself in religion, assume the role of a guardian of heaven, and open his hand like an armed beggar, asking for "alms" under the threat of a gun. He is the only thief in history who steals without hiding his hands, but rather raises them in broad daylight as if performing a religious duty. He practices plunder as if he is performing a sacred ritual. He steals with a firm belief that what he is doing is a "sacred right," and that others are merely tools in his service, mere servants who must toil so that he and his followers can live in luxury and power.

This impudence is not an exception, but the essence of the breed, its inherited characteristic, and the secret of its survival since it set foot on this earth as an eternal disaster. The breed has never been productive; it has only known the life of a parasite. It does not cultivate the land, it does not build a home, it creates only destruction, it feeds on the toil of others, it establishes its existence on the remains of their efforts, it inherits thievery as it inherits names. Each generation comes with new clothes, with new slogans, but it remains with the same idea, it remains a climber, it feeds on the efforts of others, it reproduces at the expense of nations, like a scourge that can only live with the death of those around it.

Throughout history, our Yemeni ancestors carved out their livelihoods from mud and stone, plowing the land with their tears and watering it with their sweat, while the ancestors stood at the harvest, waiting for their share of the sweat without a drop of shame. As life evolved, so did the tools of his plunder, but he remained the same: a climbing creature, stealing from the sweat of the toilers, reaching out to exploit their fatigue, establishing his kingdom over their pain, seizing their resources as if they were his personal inheritance, as if they were slaves created only to serve him.

This is not just a war, it is a battle for existence, a battle between Yemen and its historical enemies, between humanity and the parasites that feed on its blood. There is no room for complacency, no tolerance for this plague. Every riyal paid to it unjustly is a bullet in the chest of Yemen, an extension of the chain of plunder that has not stopped for centuries. The war with it is not just a fight, but the extermination of a sick idea, the breaking of a rotten structure that has been leaning on the backs of Yemenis since time immemorial. This is a battle in which we either break, or break the chains that bind us. Either we uproot these parasites, or they devour us to the bone.

Yemen will not be free as long as the dynasty reigns supreme, and Eid will not regain its meaning until this land is liberated from its thieves.