The good news about the Houthi missile attack on Tel Aviv/Jaffa, and how to stop these attacks ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Saturday, December 21, 2024

The good news about the Houthi missile attack on Tel Aviv/Jaffa, and how to stop these attacks

Early this morning, a ballistic missile from Houthi forces in Yemen slammed into a park in Jaffa. Debris and the shockwave shattered numerous windows, causing over 20 relatively minor injuries.

Israel's missile defenses failed to intercept the missile.

That's the bad news.

Here's the good news:

1. It is a miracle that the missile did not hit a building, which would have caused numerous injuries and deaths. Only the area of Tel Aviv/Jaffa are open space, which means that a missile avoiding hitting any building directly is significantly less likely than hitting a building.

2. The Houthis are presumably using Iran's most sophisticated missiles. While they claim that they aimed at a military target, clearly the missiles they have do not have good accuracy - it can be presumed that any military facilities are nowhere near the impact site, probably hundreds of meters away t the least, judging from the photos of the obviously residential buildings surrounding the park.

This means that any claims that the Houthis have that they are only aiming at military targets is absurd - they are aiming at populated areas and the attacks are indiscriminate. This means that by any definition, the Houthi attacks are war crimes.

3. While the Arrow missiles missing their targets are quite concerning, the Israelis learn quickly how to correct mistakes. At least this mistake wasn't fatal.

Another important point is the lack of any condemnation of the hundreds of Houthi attacks on Israel by :"human rights" groups. It further proves that "human rights" groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch don't care about Jewish lives. The only time I found either group say that Houthi attacks may be a war crime is when HRW was condemning Israel for retaliating; they have plenty of articles condemning the Houthis for other crimes but not one against Houthi attacks on Israel. They simply cannot credibly claim that they are evenhanded - their bias is obvious to anyone who isn't themselves biased.

The question is, can Israel do anything to deter the Houthis?

I believe they can. Not by threatening the Houthis.- but by threatening Iran.

Iran still has not responded to Israel's last raid, because it knows that any Israeli response will be much more damaging. Israel's airstrikes sent a clear message that Israel can hit any area in Iran and that it was pulling its punches. Iran cannot thread the needle between showing that they are not cowards and dooming their oil exports, for example.

Israel needs to announce clearly that it considers the Houthis to be a proxy of Iran, doing Iran's bidding, and the next missile or drone from Yemen will prompt a response to Tehran. And follow through.

Nothing Israel or the US can do will stop the Houthis (except a Hezbollah-type campaign to kill all their leaders, a very difficult task from that distance.) But the Iranians are more practical and care more about self-reservation than the Houthis. Only Iran can tell them to stop, so let's make the "proxy" issue explicit: proxies do the bidding of a master, and Israel will go after the master.