Who thought we'd be fighting Yemen?

A linguistic challenge: Yemeni dialect poses a new puzzle for Israeli intelligence

The IDF turns to Yemeni language experts to tackle the Houthis’ unique threat.

Houthi terrorists (Photo: Mohammed al-wafi/ Shutterstock)

Until about a year and two months ago, the Houthis in Yemen were not a target of surveillance by the Israeli intelligence community. Throughout the years, the Houthis have not been a threat to Israel, not even a secondary one.

The Houthis began operating as a militia around 2014. They waged a war against the regime in Yemen until 2019. At the same time, they fought against Saudi Arabia, which succeeded in harming the Houthis and killing an estimated 350,000 to 400,000 Houthis in Yemen.

About a year and months ago, with the encouragement and support of Iran, the Houthis began to act and fight directly against Israel. The IDF's Intelligence Directorate understood that the issue of intelligence gathering, as well as the analysis of the information that reaches Israel, requires the skill of Yemenite speakers: speaking and reading. as well as understanding the Yemenite mood and culture, and getting to know the tribalism of Yemen.

Here, however, the Intelligence Directorate encountered a double problem: the Yemen arena is a different event from the perspective of the Israeli intelligence community. The Yemenite dialect is unlike the dialects our traditional enemies speak. Moreover, the intelligence community discovered that there are no young men and women in Israel who know the Yemeni dialect.

The last great aliyah from Yemen was the "Magic Carpet" and it took place between the years 1949 and 1950. Most of the immigrants abandoned their native Yemenite language, and they began to speak Hebrew regularly, both in their homes and in social gatherings of members of the community. Thus, unlike other immigrant languages, the Yemenite dialect was not instilled in the younger generations.

In the meantime, at the training base of the Intelligence Corps in Bahad 15, a class was recently opened for the study of the Yemenite dialect, as well as studies on Yemeni culture and tribalism. The goal is to train groups of intelligence personnel who will operate the "Yemen" intelligence desk.

The IDF has recently recruited several Yemenite-speaking teachers who teach the intelligence corps to read, write, and speak the Yemenite dialect. At the same time, Military Intelligence is trying to study the Houthis' mentality in light of the fact that Saudi Arabia has waged an all-out war against them, killed a huge number of Houthis, and even had to deal with a campaign that accused it of genocide because of the fighting.

But in practice, the Houthis did not break down, and Saudi Arabia was forced to stop the fighting, without any special successes. "We are working to collect quality targets in order to influence the Houthis, but it is clear to us that this is a challenge that we have not known before," says a military source.

* Maariv contributed to this article.


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