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)