🇾🇪⚡- Violent clashes between the pro-PLC Giant Brigades and Ansarullah in the al-Wazi'iyah area, Mocha direction, southwest Yemen.

Ansarullah forces have advanced towards Arsat al-Mabdoubi, with clashes also ongoing over Jabal al-Rawa.

🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇮🇱 Congresswoman Claudia Tenney on X: The UK is rallying countries to economically isolate Israel.

The United States must make clear that joining this effort comes with consequences.

Today, I urged the US Treasury Secretary Bessent to review these boycott measures under Section 999 and add every qualifying country to the international boycott list without delay!

Dear Secretary Bessent,
I write to express my grave concerns regarding the recent decision by a new group of Western countries,
led by the United Kingdom, to boycott Israel and to urge the Department to examine the implications of the proposal under U.S. law.

As I have previously written to you, Section 999 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 – commonly
referred to as the Ribicoff Amendment – reflects the United States’ bipartisan commitment to opposing foreign boycotts against friendly nations, particularly those aimed at Israel.

Under this law, the Treasury Department is required to maintain a list of countries that condition
commercial participation on compliance with an unsanctioned international boycott. Inclusion on this list imposes specific tax reporting requirements and potential penalties for U.S. individuals and businesses engaged in certain activities in those countries.

Yesterday, the United Kingdom announced it would ban the importation of goods made in Israeli-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria, and sanction companies involved in expanding housing and growing communities in the region. United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced that the
UK would not be acting alone, claiming that France and Canada would join this effort. Additionally, Secretary Miliband announced that Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Portugal, and Sweden have pledged to provide support for the ban.

This measure builds on other similar recent measures in Spain, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway that I have raised with you with great concern. All of these efforts are part of a broader effort aligned with the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to
economically isolate Israel. Such policies not only promote economic discrimination, but also create legal uncertainty for U.S. companies operating in these countries.

I urge you to examine expeditiously whether these growing policies by European countries require or
may require participation in or encouragement of an international boycott within the meaning of Section 999(a)(3). If the criteria are met, then these countries should be added to the boycott list without delay to ensure that U.S. companies are informed of their reporting obligations and protected from unintended legal exposure.

The United States must send a clear signal that efforts to economically isolate Israel will carry consequences, and that U.S. law designed to combat such discrimination will be enforced.

I appreciate your attention to this matter and look forward to your response.

Sincerely, Claudia Tenney
Member of Congress

https://tenney.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/tenney.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/tenney-uk-bds-letter-final.pdf

📎 Rep. Claudia Tenney

— 🇸🇦/🇾🇪 NEW: Ansarallah forces pose in front of the Security Directorate building in Hays, confirming the city is captured

@Middle_East_Spectator

🇾🇪⚡- PLC sources confirm reports of the withdrawal of their forces from Hays, southwest Yemen, which support circulating claims of possible Ansarullah control over the strategic city.

🇾🇪⚡- Ansarullah forces have approached Mocha from the east, and are attempting to reach the city from the north as well, where fighting is ongoing for the town of Yakhtul.

The al-Houthi forces have been positioned around the city for almost 90 minutes now.

90 minutes ago, Abu al-Baraa, Commander of the Sixth Infantry Brigade of the Giant Brigades, released the following message:

"It's now 2am, 2am in the morning. I'm in Mocha center. Its [Hays] fall was announced at 10pm.

We are here, we are inside [in Mocha]. They [Ansarullah] are outside. There, outside. We are inside to secure the positions. We have nothing, we say nothing, God is sufficient for us.

We will return to these lands, God willing. Rifle by rifle, we will return. All wars have their ups and downs. We will have our comeback. Our morale is high.

This is Mocha. What is left. This is from the inside of Mocha center."

— 🇸🇦/🇾🇪 NEW: General Yousef Al-Sharaji, the commander of Saudi-backed PLC forces on the Taizz front, submits his resignation

He cites heavy battlefield losses, positions being lost, poor coordination and alleged betrayal from within the ranks.

@Middle_East_Spectator

🇾🇪⚡️- Abu al-Baraa, commander of the pro-PLC Sixth Infantry Brigade of the Giants Brigades, admits that some forces have fled the West Coast front and "betrayed" them, but vows that his forces will continue fighting.

☕️ 🇾🇪 📖 Your Mocha is Named After the Birthplace of the Coffee Trade

The port city of Mocha, in Yemen, was once a vast coffee marketplace

Your coffee shop order has a history that stretches back thousands of years–it’s the name of a coastal city in Yemen that was once a coffee hub.

Mocha is a port city on Yemen’s south western coast that borders the Red Sea. It has been associated with coffee since its founding in the 1300s, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, but the heyday of its trade with Europe came during the founding of a European coffee culture in the 1700s. 

The city “was long famous as Arabia’s chief coffee-exporting centre,” writes the encyclopedia. “Coffee was everything for Yemen,” businessman Sheikh Shabbir Ezzi  told Hyacinth Mascarenhas writing for Mic. “It’s a gift from our ancestors. You can see how important coffee was for Yemen from the emblem of the country," which depicts an eagle holding a scroll with "The Yemeni Republic" written on it in Arabic. The eagle's chest is a shield depicting none other than a coffee plant.

The coffee plant can only be grown at high elevations such as the highlands surrounding Mocha, she writes, making the port city an important point of export. “Locals gave it the Arabic name qahwa, the word from which coffee and cafe are derived, “ Mascarenhas writes.

Coffee as a beverage was developed sometime around the 1400s. “At first the Arab Sufi monks adopted coffee as a drink that would allow them to stay awake for midnight prayers more easily,” writes author Mark Pendergrast. “While coffee was first considered a medicine or religious aid, it soon enough slipped into everyday use.”

As anyone who has ever reached with shaking hand for their first morning cuppa can attest to, there’s a reason why the drink spread quickly from there. After the Ottoman Turks occupied Yemen in 1436, coffee's popularity spread with the empire. And, writes Pendergrast, by the end of the fifteenth century, Muslim pilgrims introduced coffee throughout the Islamic world. “The beans generally were exported from the Yemeni port of Mocha, so the coffee from that region took on the name of the port,“ Pendergrast writes. The city grew and flourished.

One of the places it reached was, eventually, Europe–where it took a while to catch on, due to its expense. But by the latter half of the 1600s, Europeans had caught the coffee bug. It was during this period that mocha got its first association with another expensive imported substance–chocolate, writes Macarenhas.  Tasting the dark, aromatic coffee that came out of Mocha, Europeans connected it with the taste of cocoa.

“As in the Middle East, the coffee house became a place for men to talk, read, share their opinions on the issues of the day and play games,” writes John McHugo for the BBC.

Although coffee shops are still a common meeting-place throughout the world, the city of Mocha is no longer the coffee hub of the globe. However, Yemeni coffee is again on the upswing, writes Nikki Ekstein for Bloomberg Pursuits. “The hard-to-find, chocolatey beans that hail from Mokha, Yemen,” are now being imported to the U.S., she writes.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/your-mocha-named-after-birthplace-coffee-trade-180965016/

🇾🇪⚡️- Visual confirmation of Presidential Leadership Council forces withdrawing from the city of Mocha, Yemen.