The Houthis have launched 200 attacks against Israel since the start of the Gaza war. They have terrorized the Red Sea, causing massive delays in shipping. The route accounts for some “15% of total global sea trade.” Joe Biden’s Red Sea coalition has proven useless.
On Thursday, Israel launched air strikes on the Houthi-controlled Red Sea port of Hodeidah in Yemen, after a Houthi drone attack hit Tel Aviv, so an exchange of fire is on, “as Israeli forces intercepted a surface-to-surface missile fired from Yemen.”
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement about the Houthis:
“From the beginning of the war, I made it clear that Israel will act against all those who attack us.
This is why earlier today, I asked the Israeli cabinet to back my decision to strike against the Houthi targets in Yemen.
The port that was targeted is not an innocent port. It’s used as their entry point for weapons that are supplied by Iran to its Houthi terrorist proxies. The Houthis have used those weapons to attack Israel, to attack Arab states in the region, to attack many others.
This strike comes in direct response to the killer drone attack yesterday that killed one person and injured several others, a hundred yards from the US Consulate in Tel Aviv.
But the aggression of the Houthis goes well beyond that single attack. Because for the past eight months, the Houthis have launched hundreds of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones against Israel.
The only reason those attacks have not caused a greater loss of life has been the defensive measures taken by Israel and its allies, which together have intercepted hundreds of projectiles.
The attack on Israel came less than a week after Iran’s “reformist” president-elect had a phone call with Mahdi al-Mashat, the Houthi chairman of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, and praised the Iranian proxy for its support of Hamas in the Gaza war.
The Shia Houthis have been living in the “rugged mountains” since the ninth century, and have been battling ever since for control of Yemen and beyond. In 2003, after the American invasion of Iraq, the Houthis adopted a slogan: “Allahu akbar, death to the U.S., death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam.”
The Iran-supported group has been drastically underestimated in the West, while posing a grave danger to the region and beyond. Last February, the Yemen government warned of a Houthi threat to “world’s digital infrastructure.”
“Israel intercepts missile from Yemen after airstrikes on Houthi port,” by Andrew Jeong, Annabelle Timsit and Jennifer Hassan, Washington Post, July 21, 2024:
Israeli forces intercepted a surface-to-surface missile fired from Yemen, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement on social media Sunday.
The missile did not cross into Israeli territory, but “warnings of rocket and missile fire” were issued out of concern that shrapnel could fall on residents, the IDF said. The missile approached Israel from the Red Sea, it said.
Although it was not immediately clear who launched the missile, a Houthi military spokesman had promised retaliation for Israel’s airstrikes Saturday on Hodeida, a port city in Yemen controlled by the rebel group. Spokesman Yahya Saree said the Israeli raids struck the port, a power station and a fuel tank.
On Sunday, Saree said his group launched “a number of missiles” against targets in the southern Israeli port city of Eilat. It was not immediately clear whether the two reported attacks were one and the same. Earlier Sunday, the IDF said air defense sirens were sounding in the area of Eilat.
The Israeli strikes on Saturdaywere a response to a rare drone attack on Tel Aviv on Friday for which the Houthis claimed responsibility. The attack killed one person and struck just yards from a U.S. Embassy branch office.
An IDF official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, told reporters Sunday that the airstrikes in Yemen were conducted using a dozen airplanes — including fighter jets and tankers. The “long range” strikes hit targets about 1,050 miles (1,700 kilometers) from Israel, the official said.
The Israeli attack on the Hodeida port, a critical hub for imports to the impoverished country, sparked massive fires. Netanyahu said the port was being “used as an entry point for deadly weapons supplied to the Houthis by Iran.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli response to the drone attack made “it clear to our enemies that there is no place that the long arm of the State of Israel will not reach.”
After the war in Gaza began in October, the Houthis started attacking ships near the Yemeni coast in an effort to build pressure on Israel to end its military operations in the Strip…..
Ade Fegan says
Isn’t it Islamophobic to intercept missiles from Yemen !?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Aside from them being funded by Iran, why are the Houthis more pre-occupied w/ attacking the US and Israel, instead of taking over the entire Yemen, or maybe just re-establishing the old North Yemen as an independent country, which it was until 1990? One would have thought that the real threats to them are the sunnis, be it of South Yemen or Saudi Arabia
It’s why it’s not worth backing minority shi’a sects anywhere: once they become a majority, or even capture power in their own fiefdoms, they become a threat to infidels, like in Lebanon and Yemen