From the New York Times:
The Israeli bombing of a vital Yemeni port controlled by the Houthi militia is not expected to deter the group from further attacks but is likely to deepen human suffering in Yemen, regional experts said.Yemeni scholars and former American officials who study the country said that the Israeli strikes would do little harm to the Houthis. Instead, they said, the attack was likely to exacerbate suffering in Yemen, which is experiencing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises after a decade of war.“The target of the strike does more to hurt the average Yemeni than the Houthis’ ability to launch attacks on the Red Sea or Israel,” said Adam Clements, a retired U.S. Army attaché for Yemen.
The article quotes other "experts" who describe how the airstrikes will hurt civilians and will not deter the Houthis.
It is an old journalistic trick, and one that news editors keep using - because it works.
First determine the editorial policy towards an event. Then find "experts" to support that position.
It gives the appearance of journalism, but it is the opposite. It is an editorial disguised as journalism.
I have yet to see a single article mention the last time Israel attacked the port of an enemy, and its effectiveness. Without knowledge of that earlier incident, all the analysis in the world is useless.
In 2020, Israel reportedly launched a devastating cyber-attack on Iran's Shahid Rajaee port in response to a failed Iranian cyber-attack to poison Israel's water infrastructure.
For days, the port was inactive. Hundreds of commercial trucks were stuck on the roads to the port scores of ships could not unload their goods and were forced to wait in line in the Persian Gulf to dock there.
It was a well-calibrated attack. It did not cripple Iran. which depends on sea traffic in order to survive, but it showed that Israel could easily have done that if it wanted to. It sent a strong message to the Iranian regime not to try to mount a similar cyberattack on Israel again.
At the time, the New York Times quoted an 'expert" as well: "[A]ccording to one intelligence assessment, the Revolutionary Guards will respond by attacking Israel again," the NYT wrote.
Four years later, we are not aware of any similar Iranian attempt since then. Israel's threat to Iran's economy worked.
The "experts" were wrong.
The Saturday attack on Hudayah was as at least as much a message to Iran as it was to the Houthis. Any self-proclaimed expert that doesn't realize this simple fact, and who doesn't reference the cyberattack on Shahid Rujaee, is not an expert at all.
The so-called experts are probably correct that the Houthis, who are insanely antisemitic to the point that cursing Jews is one of the four major tenets listed on their flag and one of the others is "death to Israel," would not be deterred by a strike on their combined military/commercial port at Hudaydah. They don't care if their own people suffer; on the contrary, like Hamas, the Houthis are basing their military strategy on the idea that their enemies care more about their own civilians than they do. But they will listen to Iran, and Iran heard the Israeli message that the next attack might not be towards Yemen but against their sponsors in Iran itself.
You know what hasn't deterred the Houthis? Six months of restrained US and Western activity in the Indian Ocean meant to protect shipping to the Persian Gulf. The allis deliberately avoided attacking Hudaydah because of its potential impact on civilians in Yemen. And as a result, the Houthis could continue to import weapons from Iran with impunity.
Israel's attack changed the equation. It is too early to know whether it will be successful or not, but clearly the Western response so far - while stopping scores of rockets and drones towards Israel and other targets - has not deterred the Houthis one bit.
One other important point about the New York Times pseudo-analysis: it supports human shielding as a tactic by Hamas and the Houthis. after all, the article is saying, anything that hurts civilians must be avoided at all costs. Every one of the analysts quoted emphasized the potential of the port attack hurting innocent Yemeni civilians. The media is saying that as long as terrorists use civilians to protect their own military assets, they should be untouchable.
This is an immoral position. And until the media understands and reports on the cynicism behind these decisions by Islamic terrorists to endanger their own people, and place the blame on their deaths squarely on the terrorists and not on those defending themselves from terrorists, the media is on the terrorists' side.
