Arabia tristis, iterum

American Senators Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee and Chris Murphy have recently seen through the Senate a resolution to stop supporting the Saudi régime’s war on the Yemeni people – a war of aggression waged by one of the wealthiest nations on earth against one of the poorest. This would indeed be welcome news and an admirable move on the part of these Senators – and the consistency and involvement of these lonely voices of both the socialist left and the libertarian right is something that will be remembered in future generations as a mark of their moral courage against this century’s greatest humanitarian disaster.

But this most recent vote is essentially a do-over of a resolution supported by the same people and passed in the Senate last year, which got derailed in the House by an unrelated procedural amendment from Republicans (but also supported by the Democratic establishment), meaninglessly and cynically posturing against anti-Semitism. Such meaningless and cynical posturing has been a long-standing feature of American policy while our policy-makers continue to aid and abet the Saudis’ slow genocide by starvation, disease and bombing of the long-suffering Yemeni Shi‘a. It is telling: the same people who loudly demand that America recognise the historical starvation of Ukrainians, or who demand that America now intervene in Venezuela (and these are, by and large, the same people), will not lift a finger now to save a starving Arab child – whether in Palestine or Syria or, most urgently, Yemen. We must do better. The only other option is cynicism, nihilism and despair, and those do not help.

I keep using the Latin phrase ‘Arabia tristis’ in the titles of these blog posts, but have not yet explained that use. That’s a ‘my bad’. My use of the phrase is a bitter historical irony. In the Byzantine era, the Greeks and the Romans called what is now Yemen ‘Arabia felix’, ‘happy Arabia’, on account of it being a land of plenty. Today, Yemen is still in desperate and dire need, and its people are grieving after these long years of dearth and tragœdy. Today it truly is ‘Arabia tristis’; and as Christians we are called upon to condole with the grieving – especially those who grieve at our hands and on account of our sins. We need to do so with more than just platitudes, but with actions. We fast; Yemen starves. During this Lenten season of struggle against the passions – a struggle I lose very frequently – and of almsgiving as well as fasting, if you are an American especially please consider giving to the people of Yemen (through organisations like Share Aid Yemen and Human Needs Development) as they desperately await not only food and medicine but also justice and peace. And please also pressure your elected officials to commit to a real peace, to end military support to the Saudis at the very least, and not to be distracted by grandstanding.