Yemen's Ansarallah keeps up the heat on Israel with repeated Tel Aviv strikes, naval blockade

The Yemeni resistance has proven to be a thorn in the flesh of the genocidal Israelis and their Western brethren.

Ansarallah of Yemen gave an early Saturday morning surprise to the Israelis, waking them up from their sleep with the clock still about 15 minutes shy of 4 am. It just wasn’t the kind of surprise the Israelis wanted.

Around 2 million Israelis rushed to bomb shelters straight from the comfort of their beds after waking up to the blaring sound of missile sirens as Ansarallah fired its indigenously developed hypersonic ballistic missile Palestine 2 bang in the middle of Tel Aviv and caused significant damage in the Zionist heartland. Footage from the attack showed failed Israeli interception attempts as the missile landed with a loud bang.

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

In a statement announcing the operation, Ansarallah said that the attack was successful:

The missile force of the Yemeni Armed Forces, with the help of God Almighty, targeted a military target of the Israeli enemy in the occupied Yaffa area [Jaffa in Tel Aviv] with a Palestine 2 hypersonic ballistic missile.

The missile hit its target accurately and the defences and interceptor systems did not succeed in countering it.

Ansarallah further added that it will continue its operations to support the Palestinian people in Gaza, who are facing a genocidal assault at the hands of the Israelis:

It also salutes the mujahideen in the Gaza Strip and their ongoing heroic operations against the Israeli enemy and emphasises that with the help of God Almighty, it will continue to support them until the aggression stops and the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted.

Footage shot by the Israelis show the Yemeni missile making impact on the ground after evading interception attempts:

Israel reported 16 light injuries from the attack. Given the Israeli penchant for downplaying casualties from resistance strikes, those numbers could be a significant undercount. Positing that Palestine 2 has an Iranian hand in its making, Israeli outlet Yedioth Ahronoth reported that such developments could pose an existential threat to the illegitimate settler colony, “The threat posed by maneuvering warheads on Iran’s heavy, long-range missiles would become existential [threat] for Israel should Iran succeed in developing nuclear warheads for these missiles.”

Notably, the latest Yemeni strike comes within a couple of days of its launching of two ballistic missiles. The strikes on Thursday hit “precise military targets” and caused significant damage to a building. Interestingly, the Israelis claim that the destroyed building was a school.

Thursday’s Yemeni attack coincided with the Israeli bombing of the Hodeidah port in Yemen. In a speech, Ansarallah chief Abdul Malik al-Houthi, said that “the coincidence of the launch of the hypersonic missile with the aggression against our country caused great confusion for the Israeli enemy and even affected the completion of its mission.”

Following the Israeli strike, which set a power plant in Hodeidah on fire and resulted in nine deaths, the Israelis struck to their typical belligerent tone. Israel Katz, the war minister of the genocidal colony, wrote on X, “I warn the leaders of the Houthi terrorist organisation: Israel’s long hand will reach you as well. Whoever raises a hand against the state of Israel, his hand will be cut off; whoever harms, will be harmed sevenfold.”

Netanyahu, who is facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, was equally threatening, “After Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are nearly the last remaining arm of Iran’s axis of evil. They are learning and they will learn the hard way, that whoever harms Israel pays a very heavy price for it.”

After Hezbollah signed a fraudulent ceasefire agreement, Ansarallah vowed to keep attacking the Zionists. It has stayed true to its promise. In what has been a busy week Ansarallah attacked Tel Aviv on Monday when it fired multiple projectiles on US-chaperoned commercial ships in the Gulf of Aden. In turn, the pro-genocide, anti-human American and British regimes bombarded Yemen’s Hajja province that same day and launched further strikes on Yemen’s defence ministry the following day.

Ansarallah’s Palestine - 2 missile sports Palestinian livery.

Ansarallah’s moral stand for Gaza

Ansarallah began attacking Israel in support of Gaza on October 19, 2023, when it launched missiles and armed drones at the genocidal entity. As the genocide continued unabated and with the full backing and funding of the supposedly civilised Western states, the Yemeni resistance gradually began targeting ships destined for Israel. Ansarallah’s blockade started with the Red Sea and the Bab-el-Mandab strait before it gradually expanded to include the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea — essentially targeting any ship headed for Israel.

For its moral and humanitarian stance, Yemen has paid dearly. The genocide-loving and Zionist-occupied regimes of the United States and United Kingdom have savagely bombed Yemen for daring to oppose the industrial scale human slaughterhouse of Gaza. Further, the US and the UK went on to lead the formation of the grotesquely named Operation Prosperity Guardian — bringing some of their smaller vassals such as the Netherlands, Finland, New Zealand, and Bahrain, etc. in tow — to foil Ansarallah’s blockade. The European Union launched its own Operation Aspides for the same purpose.

But these efforts have failed to deter the Yemeni resistance. Ansarallah has kept fearlessly attacking the combined might of the West, forcing many of the ships to flee and for their captains to give harrowing accounts of their time confronting the might of the sandal-clad, jambiya-wielding, anti-genocide Yemenis. In June, AP reported that “[t]he U.S.-led campaign against the Houthi rebels…has turned into the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.”

In the report, one American sailor gave an account of the challenges his crew faced:

“I don’t think people really understand just kind of how deadly serious it is what we’re doing and how under threat the ships continue to be,” Cmdr. Eric Blomberg with the USS Laboon told the AP on a visit to his warship on the Red Sea.

“We only have to get it wrong once,” he said. “The Houthis just have to get one through.”

Another sailor complained of fatigue battling Ansarallah’s relentless pursuit of the enablers of the Israeli genocide in Gaza:

“It is every single day, every single watch, and some of our ships have been out here for seven-plus months doing that,” said Capt. David Wroe, the commodore overseeing the guided missile destroyers.

Here’s another testimony from the report, highlighting the success of Ansarallah’s stand:

“This is the most sustained combat that the U.S. Navy has seen since World War II — easily, no question,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “We’re sort of on the verge of the Houthis being able to mount the kinds of attacks that the U.S. can’t stop every time, and then we will start to see substantial damage. … If you let it fester, the Houthis are going to get to be a much more capable, competent, experienced force.”

Months later, a similar report published in The National Interest, said that Ansarallah gave a “serious scare” as one of its “anti-ship ballistic missiles got within an astonishing 200 meters of the [USS Dwight D. Eisenhower] carrier,” forcing it to withdraw to safety.

Similarly, USS Abraham Lincoln was forced to withdraw from the Red Sea last month, leaving the US Navy without a carrier in West Asian waters. USS Nicholson met the same fate mid-November.

Recently, Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer Bill LaPlante expressed astonishment at Ansarallah’s capabilities: “I’m an engineer and a physicist, and I’ve been around missiles my whole career,” he said last month. “What I’ve seen of what the Houthis have done in the last six months is something that — I’m just shocked.”

With the much superior US and UK navies facing such challenges, EU’s pro-genocide warships stood no chance. The Greek commander of the EU’s Operation Aspides complained of a small fleet which wasn’t enough to stave off Ansarallah’s near-endless attacks with missiles and drones.

Ansarallah has also sunk several commercial ships which have refused to abide by its declaration of shunning business with the Israelis for as long as they continue their genocidal onslaught and siege of Gaza.

An Iraqi drone hits the Eilat port.

Impact of the Yemeni resistance

Many of Ansarallah’s operations have been conducted in conjunction with the Iraqi resistance, the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU). Their relentless barrage of daily attacks on the Israeli port of Eilat ultimately shut it down for good. The port, Israel’s only one on the Red Sea, declared bankruptcy in July, forcing hundreds into unemployment as the Israeli economy reels under the financial demands of its genocidal wars being waged on multiple fronts.

Frustrated by Ansarallah’s intransigence in being a bulwark against their butchery of the Palestinians, the US and the UK have launched dozens of raids on various parts of Yemen to deter their resistance. Israel, too, launched a savage attack in July that left the port of Hodeidah aflame. Human Rights Watch said that the disproportionate nature of the attack — an Israeli specialty — which targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure — may amount to a war crime.

Many Yemenis have paid with their live, but they couldn’t care less. Millions of them have continued to march every Friday in protest of the monumental Israeli crimes and urged their leaders to do all within their means to put an end to the assault on Gaza.

Their leaders have obliged. Ansarallah chief Abdul Malik al-Houthi in his speech last Thursday gave an account of the operations the Yemeni resistance had carried out until then:

Since the beginning of the support for the Palestinian people until today, 1,147 ballistic and winged missiles and drones have been bombed, along with naval operations with warships."

211 ships linked to the enemies were targeted, and the Israeli enemy’s maritime navigation in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab and the Arabian Sea was prevented.

Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation reported on Saturday that Israel is trying to build an alliance against the Yemenis. This building of a new coalition is a testament to the success of Ansarallah’s attacks as well as the US and its vassals’ attempts to break the Yemeni naval blockade of Israel.

US-UK strikes on Yemeni capital Sana'a on Saturday night.

Late Saturday night, the US and UK started bombing Sana’a again. Just like the other such bombings over the last 15 months, it is unlikely to deter the Yemenis. On the contrary, the Yemenis can be expected to hit them back even harder and continue at it until the genocide and blockade of Gaza is brought to an end.

---

Before you go…

Some weeks ago I started a fundraiser after getting fired from my job for pro-Palestine activism (I wrote about it here.) I am immensely grateful to everyone who has contributed so far — some of you have done multiple rounds! — and cherish your solidarity. I am falling short by about $1,150. It would be amazing if you could send some festival cheer my way and help me close this fundraiser soon. You can contribute on my Ko-fi page here: https://ko-fi.com/palestinewillbefree.

Your paid subscriptions here or on Ko-fi or Patreon also go a long way in helping me continue this work, which I will keep free forever. Thank you for reading and your support.

---