The Israeli navy sent missile boats into the Red Sea on Wednesday to defend the southern approach to the country from missiles, drones, and other long-range attacks mounted by Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist rebels operating from Yemen.
President Joe Biden delisted the Houthis as a terrorist organization within days of taking office in 2021, as part of an anti-Saudi push. Democrats resented the Saudi monarchy for working closely with the Trump administration, and woke up to Saudi human rights abuses that presidents of both parties had overlooked for years. The Biden White House also withdrew support for the Saudi war in Yemen to defend the government from Houthi rebels, despite the threat to the U.S. Navy across the Bab-el-Mandeb.
The Houthis have fired several missiles toward Israel during the present conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas terror organization in Gaza, some of which appear to have been intercepted by Saudi Arabia, as well as by U.S. Navy ships. On Tuesday, Israel used its Arrow missile defense system to intercept a Houthi missile near the port city of Eilat.
Iran has been threatening to use its other terrorist proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, to relieve Israeli pressure on Hamas.
Israeli losses in the invasion of the Gaza Strip climbed to eleven on Tuesday, after a tank drove over an explosive device and Hamas terrorists fired an anti-tank missile at an armored personnel carrier with soldiers inside.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that it has hit 11,000 terrorist targets since the conflict began on October 7, when Hamas terrorists launched a brutal and unprovoked attack inside Israel that killed an estimated 1,200 people, wounded more than 5,400, and saw 240 taken as hostages to Gaza.
The IDF published videos of some of its recent activities in the Gaza Strip:
Israel has vowed to push ahead with its ground invasion in Gaza, and is determined to destroy Hamas, despite the risk of heavy losses to its soldiers.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect a revised number on the death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. The Israeli government estimate of 1,400 was revised to around 1,200, according to Reuters.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.