GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 442

No One Is Learning

The Houthis Respond

We’re told in a report from The Times Of Israel that the Houthi rebels aren’t learning their lesson as they sent a missile that somehow wasn’t intercepted by Israeli defense systems:

A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthis exploded in a public park in Jaffa, south Tel Aviv, overnight Friday-Saturday after attempts to intercept it failed.

Medics said 16 people were lightly injured by shattered glass, including a three-year-old girl, while 14 were bruised while rushing to shelters.

Footage from the park showed a crater where the missile had impacted.

The missile did trigger sirens, though:

The missile launch caused sirens to sound throughout central Israel at 3:44 a.m., sending millions rushing to shelters from their beds.

It was the second time in as many days that a Houthi missile sparked sirens in the country’s center in the middle of the night.

The IDF admitted that they tried to intercept it. Social media was full of details on the attack:

The military confirmed that a missile originating in Yemen impacted in Tel Aviv, saying “attempted interceptions did not succeed.”

It said details of the event were being looked into. Videos on social media showed the moment of impact and the failed interceptions. A video showed the impact site in the park in Tel Aviv. Footage also showed exploded windows and debris in several surrounding apartments, apparently as a result of the shockwave.

As mentioned earlier, this is the second attack this week from the Houthi rebels:

On Thursday, a drone was intercepted off the Tel Aviv coast and on Monday a missile triggered sirens across the country.

The latest missile attack from Yemen came only two days after the last one, and after the Israeli Air Force carried out a major strike on the country.

Early on Thursday morning, a Houthi projectile was partially intercepted outside Israeli airspace by air defenses. 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 reported in previous podcasts, the IDF hit the rebels hard, but apparently not hard enough. Netanyahu promised more strike if they didn’t take this hint:

After Thursday’s strikes in Yemen, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 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.”

If this latest missile attack is any evidence, I’d say the IDF should get ready to hit them even harder since they certainly are telling Israel to punish them more.

Netanyahu Not Budging

In an article from The Jerusalem Post Prime Minister Netanyahu tells us once again that he is not moving off his redline for ending the war:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he would not "agree to end the war before we remove Hamas" in an interview with Wall Street Journal editorial writer Elliot Kaufman, which was later published in the US newspaper on Friday.

The PM told The Post this concerning leaving Hamas in power:

"We’re not going to leave them in power in Gaza, 30 miles from Tel Aviv. It’s not going to happen,” he said amid calls by many to accept a lasting ceasefire-hostage release deal in the Palestinian enclave. The Journal op-ed notes that the Israeli prime minister only envisions such a deal to be a partial one if the Palestinian terrorist organization is still intact.

He said it is clear that they are taking care of business in the war:

The Israeli leader told Kaufman that Israel is "winning big" against its opponents with the weakening of Hamas and Hezbollah and the dismantlement of Syria's Assad regime, the op-ed notes.

Interestingly, Netanyahu had kind words for Joe Biden for the support he gave Israel:

He then discussed the US withholding weapons should Israel enter Rafah, which Netanyahu described as a "legitimate case" and appreciated the pressure US President Joe Biden was under on the matter, Kaufman's op-ed stated, with the Israeli leader saying "It’s not easy to be president, let’s face it, with these very radical fringes in his party. It wasn’t easy to do what Mr. Biden did."

The PM said that taking out the leader of Hezbollah was a bigger event than he realized:

Looking towards Israel's northern border, Netanyahu told Kaufman that before his assassination, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah "was literally taking over the command of the military actions. But the thing that startled me was that I realized he was the axis of the axis, replacing [Qassem] Soleimani.”

Netanyahu then talked about how weakening Iran did major damage to all of its proxies and led to the downfall of the Assad regime in Syria:

He later said that Iran "has no supply line," saying the Islamic Republic spent billions of dollars on Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. “We warned Assad not to let Iran supply Hezbollah with weapons through Syria. He played dumb,” he added. “I don’t know if we killed anyone, but we certainly smashed the weaponry of the Syrian army,” he said regarding the Israeli bombing of Syria’s chemical weapons facilities. “We don’t want all the stuff the Syrians amassed falling into the hands of the jihadists.”

Looking forward to January 20th of next year, the PM feels that a Trump administration is a very good thing for Israel:

He then made it clear that he was optimistic about US President-elect Donald Trump returning to the Oval Office, saying that he "places the onus squarely on Hamas and tells them there will be consequences.”

All in all, the interview sets the stage for what could happen in the next 29 days if Hamas heeds the Trump warnings and releases all the hostages. Could we see the same last minute hostage move we saw in 1979 when Iran released their hostages after 444 days of captivity? It would be a more than pleasant surprise and would almost certainly end the fighting in Gaza.