Striking Back at Houthi/Yemen Israel Attacks Earns UN Censure

"These military targets were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to smuggle Iranian weapons into the region and for the entry of senior Iranian officials."

"This is a further example of the Houthis' exploitation of civilian infrastructure for military purposes."

"The Houthi terrorist regime is a central part of the Iranian axis of terror and their attacks on international shipping vessels and routes continue to destabilize the region and the wider world."

"The IDF will not hesitate to operate at any distance against any threat to the State of Israel and its citizens."

Israel Defense Forces statement 

"Israel's deterrence has failed against our country."

"The Israeli enemy knows that our operations continue, they are effective and influential. Our missiles, which the [Israeli] defence systems did not succeed in intercepting, have caused great frustration in Israel and the U.S."

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi

"Like them, we are striking at our enemies. ... The Houthis will also learn what Hamas, Hezbollah, the Assad regime and others have learned, and this will also take time."

"This lesson will be learned across the Middle East."

"We are determined to cut off this terrorist arm of Iran's axis of evil." 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

IDF Chief Herzi Halevy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz at IDF control center during airstrikes in Yemen (Photo: IDF)

On the first night of Chanukah, speaking in Jerusalem at his office, Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke of Israel once again facing a Maccabean struggle in the modern era. Beside him, Defence Minister Israel Katz repeated that anyone responsible for attacking Israel becomes a target for retribution: "We will hunt down all the Houthi leaders --we will strike them as we have done in other places. No one will be able to evade Israel's long reach".

 

Yemen, 2000 kilometers' distance from Israel has also had a surprisingly 'long arm'. It has been sending missiles into Israel as though that distance doesn't exist. For a relatively  undeveloped country, a Third World nation at war with itself in a protracted civil war that has left the country in a perilous state of economic drift and social incontinence where children of Yemen are suffering from malnutrition, where land mines and IEDs make it impossible for farmers to work their fields to grow life-sustaining crops and where children and adults become minefield casualties, their lives forever changed.

A country whose young boys, from pre-teens to their teen years are taught the noblest lessons of all, to inflict pain and suffering on Houthi enemies in the defence of their brand of triumphalist Islam -- from whom there are videoed attestations by proud young boys caparisoned in army gear, handling lethal weaponry with the ease they were taught, setting out to sacrifice their lives as martyrs whose honour and courage will be celebrated by the conscienceless Houthis -- the poorest nation in the Middle East is in constant upheaval.

 

Smoke rises near Sanaa International Airport after Israeli strikes hit Yemen's capital, Sanaa, on Thursday    Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

 

There is no money for the basic necessities of life, there is no concern from Sanaa, their capital, over needed civil infrastructure, over employment for the mass of the people living in poverty. For them the allure of conflict extended beyond its shores at the behest of the Persian Islamic Theocratic Republic which supplies it with ever-increasingly sophisticated weaponry they can flaunt with pride and target the hated Jews with, has attained a state of heightened compulsion.

For over a year Yemen's Houthi terrorists have turned their attention from tormenting their Yemeni governmental opponents to exercising their Iranian-terror-proxy credentials by shooting first crude missiles and more latterly technically advanced weaponry capable of eluding Israel's vaunted self-defence systems, sending missiles into the heart of Israel. 

From initially harassing merchant marine vessels in the Red Sea and searching out any that are aligned with Israeli shipping or Israeli owned, in the war they have declared on the Jewish State in solidarity with Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis have become a threat to world shipping through the critical sea routes linking east and west, drawing the United Kingdom and United States' navies into action against their piracy. 

 

Emergency services personnel walk at a damaged site after a ballistic missile fired from Yemen was intercepted, in Ramat Gan, Israel December 19, 2024. (credit: STOYAN NENOV/REUTERS)

 

With advanced missiles launched from Yemen into Israel there was little question but that Israel would respond in kind. A situation that appears to have exercised Secretary General Antonio Guterres to protest on behalf of the United Nations, condemning Israel for attacking Yemen. No agency of the United Nations can rest content without the routine condemnation of Israel for feeling entitled to defend itself from violent attacks by enemy nations surrounding it.

"Israel has been attacked hundreds of times by Houthi terrorists. Millions of Israelis are being terrorized by Houthis missile attacks every night. All of these attacks on Israel were unprovoked and carried out by terrorists operating 2,000 kilometers away from Israel."

"And yet, Secretary-General Guterres couldn’t bring himself to mention that the State of Israel and its citizens have been relentlessly attacked by the Houthis—and that Israel was acting in self-defense."

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein

Last Thursday evening, the Israeli Air Force conducted a series of strikes on the western coast of Yenen and deep within the country. Sanaa International Airport in the capital of the Houthi-controlled portion of Yemen was not immune to attack.  Also targeted were Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations. Terror infrastructures in the Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Kanatib ports of Yemen were also struck.

Israel's Arrow 3 air-defence system intercepted a Houthi ballistic missile hours following the Thursday attack. Leading Israel's Defence Minister to threaten the Houthi leadership with targeted attacks. The latest Houthi projectile was shot down before crossing into Israeli airspace. Millions of Israelis were alerted to go to shelters when air-raid sirens sounded across much of central Israel.

A DAMAGED BEDROOM in a home in Jaffa after a ballistic missile fired from Yemen hit a nearby playground last week.   (photo credit: ITAI RON/FLASH90)

 

Grisly New York Subway Murder

"New Yorkers came through again. [The case is] one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being."

"[The woman's clothing] became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds."

"[Body cameras worn by the officers caught a] very clear, detailed look [at the suspect and those images were publicly disseminated."

"Officers were on patrol on an upper level of that station, smelled and saw smoke and went to investigate. What they saw was a person standing inside the train car fully engulfed in flames." 

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch

The incident unfolded at Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station in Brooklyn   Getty Images

 

A woman seated inside a stationary subway train in New York City was approached silently by a stranger. The woman appeared to be asleep. The man who moved toward this woman had clear intentions to destroy the life of someone he knew nothing about. He is now in police custody considered for the time being to be a 'person of interest' in a crime. The woman is dead. Incinerated. 

 

The police are investigating whether the unidentified woman was a homeless person. And attempting to establish who the man is and what his possible motive could be.

The man had been apprehended by transit police who had received a report from three high school students who had seen images of the suspect from surveillance and police bodycam videos which police had distributed widely. The three identified the man, recognizing his image. Their assistance in identifying the man ultimately led to his arrest.

According to Police Commissioner Tisch, what is known is that both the woman and the suspect were on a subway train and no interaction had taken place between them. They rode to the end of the line in Brooklyn on Sunday at around 7:30 in the morning. Surveillance video from the subway car showed the man 'calmly' walking toward the victim when the train came to a stop. The woman was seated motionless and might have been sleeping.

The man retrieved a lighter from a pocket and proceeded to set the woman's clothing on fire. Officers at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station on a routine patrol detected the odour of smoke and  saw it rising from the subway car. They headed directly for the car to discover a woman standing in the middle of the subway car, within a blazing fire consuming her clothing and the woman herself. Emergency medical personnel, the fire extinguished, declared the woman dead at the scene.

The suspect, meanwhile had not left the area. He had seated himself on a bench on the platform of the subway, close by the train car. Following a 911 call from the teenagers identifying the man, transit officers realized the man was present on another subway train, radoieing ahead an emergency alert to the next station. Officers at that next station kept the train doors closed while they searched every car, ultimately apprehending the man without incident. When he was taken into custody a lighter was found in his pocket.

New York police released images of a person of interest in the incident, later announcing they had charged him with murder  New York Police Dept. via Reuters

The man has since been publicly identified as 33-year-old Sebastian Zapeta. The charges against him include that he had fanned the flames that resulted when he set the woman's clothing on fire, waving a shirt that caused flames to fully engulf her. He faces charges of first and second degree murder, along with arson, for the attack. According to an immigration official, the man had entered the U.S. illegally in 2018. He was detained and deported. He once again illegally entered the U.S.

Debating Free Expression in France

"I am moved, and I am relieved. Hearing the word 'guilty' — that's what I needed."

"I spent this week listening to a lot of rewriting of what happened, and it was hard to hear, but now the judge has stated what really happened, and it feels good."

"I think my brother died for nothing, [teachers were still being targeted by violence and threats]."

Gaëlle Paty, Samuel Paty's sister

 

"It's something that really shocks the family."  

"You get the feeling that those in the box are absolutely unwilling to admit any responsibility whatsoever."

"Apologies are pointless, they won't bring Samuel back, but explanations are precious to us. We haven't had many explanations of the facts."

Paty family lawyer Virginie Le Roy

The fallout from Paty’s killing reinforced the French state’s commitment to freedom of expression and its firm attachment to secularism in public life. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

French teacher Samuel Paty was murdered on October 16, 2020 outside the school where he taught, in a horrific killing that shocked France. At that time, there were protests in many Muslim countries along with online incitement for violence to target France and Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French newspaper which had republished the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad several weeks before Paty's death, to mark the trial opening of the deadly 2015 attacks on the newspaper's newsroom by Islamic jihadists.

Mr. Paty had thought he would discuss the issue with his students in the classroom, using a cartoon of the Prophet as an illustration and to focus on how a well-balanced society has a respect for freedom of speech, however insulting it may appear to some. That in a free society people have the right to speak as they see fit, and to say what they believe as long as that speech is not used to promote hatred and violence. What his lesson for the day did, however, was to inflame already-heightened social unrest.

One of his students went home to tell her father how her teacher had insulted her and assaulted her belief in Islam's Prophet Mohammad by mocking the religion and its Prophet. Her father began an online agitation promoting vengeance against the teacher, inciting young Muslim men to conspire to take revenge against an unforgivable blasphemy. The trial of eight co-conspirators to the murder concluded on Friday at France's anti-terrorism court when those convicted of involvement in Samuel Paty's beheading were sentenced.

The actual assailant, an 18-year-old Chechen Russian had been shot to death by police at the time of the murder. The eight who were convicted on terrorism charges stood accused of providing assistance to the perpetrator of the grisly killing; among them others charged and convicted of organizing a hate campaign that led to the murder of Samuel Paty. Central Paris's 540-seat special terrorism court was packed for the verdict, the atmosphere charged.

 

It was clear from some of the comments of those present, the families of the convicted, that remorse over the event for many was completely absent. Women whose sons were sentenced to prison were distraught and disbelieving over the sentences; their sons had done nothing wrong. From among them gasps were emitted as the lead justice delivered the sentences. Cries, shouts and mocking clapping erupted, leading the judge to pause repeatedly and call for order.

 

Francis Szpiner, a French lawyer representing Samuel Paty' son, speaks to the press on Dec. 20, 2024, at the Paris Special Assize Court after the verdict in the case against eight people charged in connection with the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in 2020.  STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images

Some of the more obstreperous were led away by police. Over 50 police officers kept order throughout the tense session. Sentences ranging from 18 months of suspended imprisonment to 16 years in prison as had been requested by prosecutors. The defendants included friends of the assailant -- Abdoullakh Anzorov -- who had aided in procuring weapons for the attack. The father of the schoolgirl whose lies had begun the fatal spiral of events included. 

When the national anti-terrorism prosecutor asked the court to downgrade offences of four of the eight defendants, the Paty family expressed their ire: "It's more than a disappointment. In a moment like this, it feels like one is fighting for nothing", said Paty's sister Mickaelle. The charge of complicity in favour of a lower charge of association with a terrorist enterprise was dropped against the two  young men accused of providing logistical support to the killer.

The father of the student whose false account of Paty's use of the caricatures triggered a wave of social media posts targeting the middle-school teacher was among those sentenced. Brahim Chnina was given 13 years in prison for criminal terrorist association. Chnina had published videos falsely accusing the teacher of disciplining his daughter for complaining about the class, naming Paty and identifying his school. Essentially making him a target for murder.

Founder of a hardline Islamist organization, Abdelhakim Sefrioui received a 15-year sentence. Both Sefrioui and Chnina were found guilty of inciting hatred against Paty.Two associates of Paty's killer were also convicted. Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov were sentenced to 16 years in prison for complicity in a terrorist killing. Both had denied wrongdoing.

French high-school teacher Samuel Paty (pictured in centre) was murdered by a radicalised Islamist teenager in 2020   AFP

 

Batten Down the Escape Hatches!

"There's a fear that this kind of restriction will enlarge into a wider community, considering the geopolitical tensions nowadays around the world, so the fear is definitely there."

"If the U.S. is really a champion of academic freedom, what you should do is not restrict this kind of communications between different countries of the world."

Jacky Li, 3rd-yr environmental studies major, University of California, Berkley

"We aren't bringing in anyone from Gaza, Syria, Somalia, Yemen or Libya or anywhere else that threatens our security."

"[We will] revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities [in response to campus protests]."

President-elect Donald Trump ... October 2023 election campaign

Cornell University has issued a travel advisory to international students.  LightRocket via Getty Images

Uncertainty over the status of foreign students studying at U.S. universities and colleges with the accession of Donald J. Trump back to the White House appears to have caused a frisson of excited responses, where a growing list of American academic institutes are now advising their international students to make haste in returning to campus before the president-elect is inaugurated, to ensure that they can, after all, return to their studies in the United States. 

In anticipation of travel bans being once again instituted, over a dozen schools have now issued travel advisories. For anyone facing uncertainty over whether they may be able to remain in the United States who depends on an academic visas, the advice is to return to campus from abroad before January 20. 

In January 2017 then-President Trump had issued an executive order banning travel to the U.S. by citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan Libya, Somalia and Yemen; just incidentally countries where the U.S. was or had been at war with, and whose nationals often turn out to be problematic in observing American laws, their faith in Islam leading them to socially incongruent methods of 'expression'.

Either barred from flight or detained at U.S. airports after landing, travellers who included both students and faculty, tourists, businessmen, and visitors, faced unpleasant interdiction. Some of those countries were removed in time while others were added; some 15 in total and over 40,000 individuals had been refused visas resulting from the ban. A ban rescinded when President Biden took office in 2021.

US. colleges and  universities enrolled over 1.1 million international students during the 2023-24 school year; students from India and China accounting for over half of all international students in the U.S. While roughly 43,800 had arrived from the 15 countries that had been affected by Mr. Trump's original travel restrictions. The question hovers as to what the Trump transition team knows is to come, although Mr. Trump himself has iterated his intention to revive the travel ban and expand it with new "ideological screening" for non-U.S. citizens.

He made it clear that his intention is to bar "dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs". The list of institutions advising international students to return before inauguration day and to prepare for potential delays at immigration control, includes Harvard and Brown, Boston schools like Northeastern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others around the country, from Johns Hopkins University to the University of Southern California.

Cornell University informed its students that a travel ban involving the 13 countries President Trump previously targeted "is likely to go into effect soon after inauguration", and it is likely that other nations could be placed on the list; in particular China and India.