‘Houthis are simply insane’: In Tel Aviv, Yemeni activist explains current conflict

Sweden-based Yemeni activist Luai Ahmed, 31, has become something of a celebrity in Israel. As he sits down for this interview in a Tel Aviv café, a woman at a nearby table gestures to attract his attention, pointing at her phone screen and exclaiming: “I was just looking at one of your videos!”

An obligatory selfie follows.

Ahmed’s fame stems from his prolific social media activity in support of the Jewish state after the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023. He has gained over 190,000 followers on Twitter, and many of his videos have gone viral.

An October 2024 clip, in which he debated American college students on the war in Gaza while dressed in traditional Yemeni garb, garnered two million views on Twitter.

Ahmed fled Yemen in 2014, shortly after the Iran-backed Houthi rebels – an extremist ethno-religious group from northern Yemen, affiliated with Shiite Islam – hijacked the pro-democracy Arab Spring revolution that had erupted in the country in 2011, toppled the government, and took over the capital, Sanaa.

Today, the Houthis rule over northwestern Yemen, controlling approximately one-third of the country’s territory and two-thirds of its population of 34 million. Designated as a terrorist group by many in the West, they have condemned Yemen to international isolation, as the country is blacklisted from trading with much of the outside world and from receiving humanitarian aid.

Already one of the poorest and least developed countries before the 2014 coup, Yemen appears to be sinking into a never-ending downward spiral.

Arab Muslim Zionist Educates College Students on Israel and The War! @JustLuai #factsforpeace pic.twitter.com/edbK97z9pk

— FactsForPeace (@Facts_For_Peace) October 18, 2024

Indifferent to the plight of civilians under their control, the rebels have for months been firing missiles and drones at Israel, claiming it as a campaign in support of Gaza during the ongoing war there against the Hamas terror group. They have recently stepped up the bombardment, launching five early-morning attacks on central Israel in eight days. On Thursday, the IDF launched a series of airstrikes in Yemen, targeting infrastructure used by the Houthis, including Sanaa International Airport, after several previous attacks on the country.

After fleeing Sanaa in 2014, Ahmed, who is openly gay, received refugee status in Sweden and later acquired Swedish citizenship. His family still lives between Yemen and Egypt, and his mother, Amal Basha, is one of the most prominent women’s rights advocates in Yemen.

In Sweden, he began working as a journalist for a local publication, writing about Islamic extremism, LGBTQ rights, and the challenges of integrating Muslim migrants into Swedish society.

Following the October 7 onslaught, Ahmed was appalled at the celebratory messages among friends and family for the massacre that led to the deaths of some 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, and the kidnapping of 251 people. He decided to start producing short clips denouncing Islamist violence and antisemitism.

His content caught the attention of pro-Israel advocacy organizations. One such group, Sharaka, a nonprofit promoting people-to-people contact between Israel and the Arab world, invited him to Israel, where he has since become a regular visitor.

He recently began collaborating with Builders of the Middle East, a nonprofit social media initiative that promotes tolerance and dialogue in the region.

In his frequent interactions with Israelis, Ahmed has come to appreciate the Middle Eastern immediacy and warmth with which people approach him.

“Coming from Scandinavia, where the culture is so cold and people are a bit like mummies, Israel feels very familiar to me. I trigger my Jewish friends when I tell them, ‘you guys are basically Arabs, with another religion.’ I say it in many of my videos: Arabs and Jews are cousins, or even brothers and sisters,” he said.

In an interview with The Times of Israel on Wednesday, Ahmed discussed his life in Yemen prior to the Houthis’ takeover, the recent escalation with Israel, and his efforts to explain the Jewish state to the world. The interview was lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

The Times of Israel: Early this morning, you and millions of others in central Israel were awakened by sirens triggered by a ballistic missile fired by the Houthis – the second night in a row and the fourth in less than a week. Forgive the facile sarcasm, but as a Yemeni in Tel Aviv, did you feel like you were receiving a souvenir from home?

Luai Ahmed: [laughs] My Israeli friends are always making fun of me. They tell me, “You Yemenis woke us up again.”

I feel the Houthis have become a bit of a joke in Israel, and for a long time, people underestimated them. But to Yemenis, it’s no laughing matter.

They want to destroy Israel; that’s their main mission. Death and destruction are their motto.

[The Houthi’s official banner reads: God is the greatest — Death to America – Death to Israel – Curse on the Jews – Victory to Islam]

Last week, I made a video addressing the Houthis directly, highlighting how they betrayed the Arab Spring of 2011 by turning it into an Islamic revolution that sank Yemen further into poverty and isolated it internationally. My message was: You’re attacking Israel now, but soon, Israel will retaliate, and you will cry about it. Look at Gaza right now. Do you want to turn Yemen into Gaza?

There are millions of Yemen children who are malnourished and living below the poverty line. People have no money, no food, no water, no gas. Instead of focusing on allocating resources to the most vulnerable, the Houthis hand them out to Hashemites, the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and the rest is spent on throwing rockets at Israel to kill Jews. How is that going to help Yemen? But to them, it’s a religious war.

[In 2020, the Houthi government passed a law based on a singular interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence that imposed a 20% tax on economic activities involving the extraction of natural resources, such as fishing and mining. The levied amounts were redirected to Hashemites, i.e., descendants of the Prophet Muhammad — a narrow segment of the population that includes the Houthi leadership. Ahmed’s mother is also a Hashemite, which has granted her immunity in her pro-women advocacy.]

A letter from a Yemeni to the Houthis — from Israel!

While the Houthis were sending balisitic missiles towards Israel, our host Luai was in Tel Aviv hiding in a shelter; he wrote a letter to the Houthis. pic.twitter.com/5eH5PP2PYe

— buildersofmideast (@buildersmideast) December 20, 2024

So where does their obsession with Israel come from? Is it simply religious fervor?

I always say that the religions of Yemen are Islam and Palestine. This predates the Houthi takeover. When I was growing up, the Palestinian flag was in every shop, every restaurant, everywhere. There were signs calling to save our Palestinian brothers and sisters, images of women in a hijab crying with their babies.

That’s the psychology of Yemenis. Their hate is not only driven by Islam.

Most people in Yemen don’t back the Houthis, because they took power by force and worsened the living conditions. However, after the war in Gaza broke out, the Houthis’ support base has expanded, because they attack Israel. People may still see them as a medieval terrorist organization that took over the country by a coup, but they are fighting the evil Jews, and they are the pride of Yemen.

I see three reasons for their obsession with Israel. Firstly, they have nothing else going for them; they have not built an infrastructure and are unable to develop the country in any way, shape or form. The only thing they have accomplished is this religious war, and they know that by fighting it, they earn the admiration of much of the Arab world, which is obsessed with Palestine.

Another reason is the sheer antisemitism in our society. I’ll give you two examples.

There was an ancient Jewish village near the city of Taiz, where my grandmother lived, that had been abandoned after the Jews left Yemen. We were not allowed to come near that village. People believed evil Jewish spirits were still haunting that area.

I remember that growing up in Sanaa, I would go to the mosque, and at the end of every prayer, we would recite a series of supplications to God that included, “May Allah destroy Israel, kill the Jews, make the Zionist orphans.” It was absolutely normal for us as children to repeat them.

The third reason is that the Houthis are simply insane. They are an extremist religious group willing to sacrifice all of Yemen for the Palestinians and for the destruction of Israel, even though they’ve never met a Palestinian and don’t know anything about Israel.

What was it like to grow up in Yemen as a gay man?

I knew about myself, but I hid it. I’ll sum up the cultural attitude toward gay people with an anecdote. When I was about 16, before the Houthis took power, I decided to ask a Yemeni what he thought of homosexuals. We were sitting on a bus, and he was holding a gun – all Yemenis have guns. I told him I had a gay friend and asked him what I should do with him. He handed me his weapon and said, “Take this gun and kill him.”

When I moved to Sweden, it was hard to explain to Swedish people these complexities. You can’t bring into your country someone from the Middle East and expect them to believe in gay rights and women’s rights. I’ve been writing a lot about these issues. I love Sweden, and I want to save it – to save Europe.

So how did your activism for Israel come about?

The first Israeli I ever met was in Sweden. One day, I was sitting in a room full of blonde people in a student dorm, and someone walked in, and he looked a bit like me. I went up to him and introduced myself, and he said he was Tal from Israel. My first immediate reaction was physical — I blacked out.

Tal said he could make Yemeni food and that he would make me jachnun [a traditional Yemeni pastry eaten by Yemenite Jews on Shabbat]. I was sure he hated me and was just being a manipulative Jew, who would try to earn my trust and then tell the Swedes behind my back that I’m a Muslim terrorist. But he didn’t. Long story short, six months later, he was my favorite person in the student dorm.

A Yemeni is going to dinner in Tel Aviv with Jews and Arabs. You won’t see this on AlJazeera or CNN, but Arabs and Jews dine together all the time in Israel and all around the world. pic.twitter.com/KprlgVjQIO

— buildersofmideast (@buildersmideast) November 14, 2024

After October 7, I was so disillusioned by family and friends who hailed Hamas as freedom fighters that I took to uploading videos to my social media, asking: How dare you celebrate or excuse the murder of innocent human beings? One thing is to be critical toward the Israeli government, but this was different.

However, the content I make is not your typical hasbara [pro-Israel public diplomacy]. I’ve made videos where I said I’m happy that Sweden recognized the state of Palestine, and I got a lot of backlash. My argument was: There needs to be a Palestinian state, but to get there, we need to deradicalize the mosques and schools so that the Palestinian cause is focused on creating a state for the Palestinians, not on destroying Israel.

I’ve also made a video of a trip to the Bedouin town of Rahat in southern Israel and interviewed residents who criticized Israel for the discrimination they suffer in Israeli society. A lot of my followers said I should not have let them say that. But the videos I make with Builders of the Middle East are not hasbara – they are aimed at giving different perspectives.

Do you have any hopes for a peaceful future in the Middle East?

What I try to explain to Israelis and Jews about the Houthis, the Yemenis, and the Palestinians, is that we are brainwashed into hating Israelis and other groups of people. It starts in the schools and the mosques.

I think Israel should do its best to improve its connections with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It’s important to gain the acceptance of the main key players in the region.

In recent years, those two countries have done what the rest of the Middle East should do: Get rid of all the antisemitic rubbish in the textbooks, get rid of the extremism in schools and mosques.

Today, at Friday prayers in mosques, imams in those countries get a script of what to read, and everything is about love and coexistence and how beautiful Islam is. If an imam says a single word that’s outside of the script, he goes to jail. It’s an enlightened dictatorship, but that’s what we need. It’s the only way to eliminate the toxicity that has taken over the region and the minds of the people.