The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen fired another ballistic missile at Israel late Monday night, reminding Israelis that there is still unfinished business in the war that Hamas launched with the October 7, 2023, terror attack.
The missile was intercepted outside Israeli airspace, but the fragments continued on their trajectory, falling on the central Israeli town of Ramat Beit Shemesh. Sirens were heard throughout central Israel in the late evening hours.
The Times of Israel reported:
Air defenses intercepted a ballistic missile launched at Israel from Yemen that triggered sirens across central Israel late Monday night, the military said, in the seventh such nighttime attack in less than two weeks.
The missile was intercepted “before it crossed into Israeli territory”, the military said, and sirens sounded across the center of the country shortly after 11 p.m. for fear of falling debris.
…
There was no major damage as a result of the missile debris, although a large fragment crashed in the Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef neighborhood in the city of Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem.
Since October 2023, Israel has destroyed most of the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist group in Gaza, and eliminated the leadership of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon, while removing its border posts.
In the aftermath of a ceasefire on favorable terms for Israel, Syrian rebels took advantage of Hezbollah and Iran’s weakness and launched an aggressive campaign that ousted the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Israel then destroyed much of what was left of Syria’s military equipment and chemical weapons facilities, while taking the strategic peak of Mount Hermon and occupying the formerly demilitarized zone between the two countries in the eastern Golan.
Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, who had joined the Houthis in firing at Israel, went quiet. As for Iran itself, it launched two large missile attacks on Israel — one in April, and one in October — but saw its air defenses destroyed in an Israeli retaliation in October. The Iranian regime is now bracing for protests after fuel shortages have led to power outages in the middle of a cold winter. The regime has never been weaker since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Israel must still reckon with the Houthis, as well as terrorist groups in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). And Iran is thought to be near the threshold of becoming a nuclear power. So there is much unfinished business as Israel enters 2024.
Yet the country is so much stronger after a year of counterattack, much of it fought by reservists — men and women with jobs and families and lives that they left behind to give everything for the survival of their country.
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 Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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