GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 440

ISIS Threat Emerges

Houthi Rebels Attacked

We read in a report from The Times Of Israel the Houthi rebels in Yemen have been left alone for some time as Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and even Syria have been in the headlines and been the focus of Israel but are suddenly been attacked by the Israel Defense Force (IDF):

Hours after the Israel Defense Forces carried out intense airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel’s operations are protecting not just itself from the Iran-backed rebel group but the entire world.

The PM then stated the obvious about the strikes:

“They are not only attacking us,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. “They are attacking the entire world. They are attacking international shipping and trade routes.”

Dozens of planes struck Houthi targets along Yemen’s western coast and, for the first time, in the rebel-held capital Sana’a, in the early hours of Thursday morning.

“When Israel acts against the Houthis, it acts for the entire international community,” Netanyahu said, adding that the US and many others “understand this well.”

Netanyahu noted that the Houthi rebels were going to be hit eventually:

He suggested that the rebel group was among the last Iranian proxies still active “after Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria.”

The Houthis, he said, “are learning and they will learn the hard way that anyone who attacks Israel pays a very heavy price.”

We now read about the actual strikes:

Fourteen fighter jets, alongside refuelers and spy planes, flew some 2,000 kilometers in the early hours of Thursday morning and dropped over 60 munitions on Houthi “military targets,” the IDF said.

Israeli military sources said the strikes in Yemen were aimed at paralyzing all three ports used by the Iran-backed group.

The targets included fuel and oil depots, two power stations, and eight tugboats used at the Houthi-controlled ports.

All of the tugboats used to bring ships into ports were struck in the Israeli attack, as were power stations. A previous attack on the Hodeida port targeted cranes used to unload shipments.

Israel now believes that all activity at the ports controlled by the Houthis is paralyzed, sources said Thursday.

These were major strikes and will severely hamper the terrorists in Yemen:

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari confirmed that among the targets hit in the “precise strikes” were “ports and energy infrastructure,” which he accused the Houthis of harnessing for “their military actions,” including missile and drone launches against Israel and attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

The military, which released videos of the strikes and the aerial refueling amid the operation, called the destruction of the targets a major blow to the military operations of the Houthis.

Major Message Sent

It is clear the Israel will not tolerate anyone attacking them now. It was only a matter of time until the IDF turned their attention to the Houthis:

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday in a statement that he was “warning the heads of the Houthi terror group: The long arm of Israel will reach you. Whoever lifts a hand against the State of Israel will have it severed. Whoever harms us will be harmed many times over.”

Katz said that Jerusalem “will not accept firing of missiles at Israel, nor harm to trade routes.”

These terrorists from the south were active all along, but the vast majority of their attacks were blocked. But the fact they were sent still remained and Israel decided to put a stop to them:

Houthi rebels have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel, with most being shot down but some managing to reach the country and cause death and destruction. Thursday’s strikes marked Israel’s third counterattack on areas in Yemen held by the rebel group.

The Israeli Air Force had been preparing for the strike for several weeks, military sources said, and the planes were already on their way to Yemen when the Houthis launched a ballistic missile at Israel shortly before 3 a.m. Thursday morning.

So the Houthis sent their rocket at the same time as the IDF was flying to hit them:

The projectile was partially intercepted outside Israeli airspace by the long-range Arrow air defense system. However, the warhead didn’t explode in the air and crashed into an empty school building in the city of Ramat Gan, causing severe damage but no injuries.

As I said before, the Houthi rebels have been a constant pest to Israel as well as to the international community:

The Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles and 170 drones at Israel in the past year. According to the IDF, the vast majority did not reach Israel or were intercepted by the military and Israeli allies in the region.

The group has also carried out repeated missiles and drone attacks on some 100 merchant vessels attempting to traverse the Red Sea, forcing many carriers to avoid the key waterway and hamstringing global shipping.

The Houthis began their attacks following Hamas’s October 7 massacre in Israel, seeking to add pressure on Israel, along with other Iran-aligned groups such as Hezbollah.

Israel wanted others to take out the rebels and some did from time to time:

For months, Israel argued that others in the international community should bear the responsibility of dealing with the Houthi threat, referring to it as a global problem — a position endorsed by Washington, which has also launched strikes on the Houthis.

On Monday, the US military’s Central Command said it hit “a key command-and-control facility” operated by the Houthis in Sana’a, later identified as the al-Ardi complex once home to the government’s defense ministry.

These strikes are major, but it may be a harbinger of more to come. And it confirms what I’ve been saying for some time and that is that Israel needed to tackle the Houthis rebels if they were going to be taken out. The reason was based on what the rebels said at the beginning of the war on Hamas. They, like Hezbollah started to hit Israel in support of Hamas and because of that the international community wouldn’t do more than a tit for tat response with them. To do more would be seen as fighting alongside with Israel in a war against all terrorists and none of them wanted to do that. So the IDF finally did what I predicted after the first attack by the Houthis.

A New Syrian Threat

While the IDF is taking care of business in Yemen they and the world may need to do something over in Syria as we’re told in an article from WND.com:

Amid the fallout from the crumbling of the Assad regime in Syria, U.S. officials warned Wednesday that thousands of ISIS prisoners held in makeshift jails run by Kurdish forces with limited resources could overpower their captors and begin to flood out across the Middle East.

This is a serious problem:

According to Daily Caller, which cited Politico, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) pushed hard into the territory of the U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who currently hold 9,000 ISIS soldiers and 50,000 others in shoddily secured detention centers. If the SNA attacks do not cease, an army-sized ISIS force might be let out of detention and cause a resurgence in the terrorist group.

"I usually hate this cliche, but this is the closest thing we have to a ticking time bomb," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said. "If Turkey doesn't get these attacks on the [Syrian Democratic Forces] halted, we could have a massive jailbreak on our hands."

We see more about this from the original source, The Daily Caller:

The prisons were meant to be temporary as the SDF organizes the extradition of the fighters to their home countries, but their home countries are reluctant to repatriate them, according to Politico.

An army in waiting? That’s what one source tells us:

“This is essentially a terrorist army in detention,” Joseph Votel, retired general who led U.S. Central Command during the fight against ISIS from 2016 to 2019, told Politico. “I am very concerned.”

In the last Trump administration we were told ISIS was eliminated, but what was left must be controlled by armies that might not be able to now:

The Trump administration wiped out the vast majority of ISIS‘s presence in the Middle East during his tenure, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Currently, the U.S. helped broker a ceasefire between the SNA and SDF over the northeastern Syrian city of Manbij, with SDF chief Mazloum Abdi looking to extend it further, according to Politico. The SDF has long fought alongside the U.S. against ISIS, with the U.S. having 900 troops stationed in Syria.

The whole country is unstable and that’s the problem:

“We continue to engage with the SDF, with Turkey about a path forward,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told Politico. “We don’t want to see any party take advantage of the current unstable situation to advance their own narrow interests at the expense of the broader Syrian national interest.”

Assad was ousted by a rebel group led by Islamic terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), with the larger group including some SNA forces. The sudden rise of HTS along with Russia’s waning influence in the region creates an extremely volatile situation in the region, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

While the international community isn’t handling the Houthis, they need to get involved with the ISIS threat. But Israel has their eyes on this situation is once again, something needs to be done.