Houthis hit Tel Aviv with drone amidst Israel’s ongoing wars in Gaza and the North
By Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 19 July 2024, www.thecommunists.net
1. According to media reports, a building very close to the US Embassy branch office in Tel Aviv – Israel’s largest city – was hit by a drone today in the morning. One person has died and 10 are injured. Yemen’s Ansar Allah (popularly known as the Houthis) has claimed responsibility for this attack. Yahya Saree, the spokesperson of its armed forces, said that it used a new drone – called “Jaffa” – which is “capable of bypassing interceptor systems and being unable to be detected by radars.”
2. Ansar Allah – the dominating force in Yemen which effectively controls the majority of the populated areas – has been engaged in military activities against Israel and its Western supporters soon after the Zionist state started its genocide against the Palestinian people in October 2023. It has effectively stopped most maritime trade in the Red Sea so that hardly any ships arrive in Eilat, Israel’s port in the south. The movement has declared that it will continue its actions in solidarity with the Palestinian people until the Zionist state agrees to a ceasefire.
3. This is an extraordinary and spectacular strike by any standards. Tel Aviv is in the centre of the country and is deemed to be a secure place. This is even more true for the US Embassy which is a high-security area. Despite all this, Israel’s air defence was incapable to intercept the drone, in fact it did not even trigger air raid sirens after entering Israeli airspace. This is a huge embarrassment for Israel which claims to possess the best air defence system in the world, next to the U.S.
4. In particular, this strike is a massive humiliation for the Netanyahu government. They are waging a genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza for 9 months. In addition, Israel’s army is engaged in a low-intensity war against Hezbollah at the northern border. Despite killing tens of thousands of people – mostly women, children and elder – and despite the unprecedented destruction of most buildings and infrastructure in Gaza, Israel has still failed to defeat the heroic resistance. Likewise, it could not stop Hezbollah which has joined the struggle in order to support the Palestinian people. Such failure in the longest war in Israel’s history is symbolised by its inability to defend even its best secured areas in its best secured city against a drone attack from a force which is based 2,500 kilometres away!
5. Yesterday, the former commander of the IDF Ground Forces Command Reserve Major General Yiftah Ron-Tal said in an Interview with Israeli Channel 14 that Israel’s army is exhausted and that it is a fait accompli that “our deterrence has hit rock bottom.” Today’s events completely confirm this pessimistic assessment of the Zionist military.
6. It remains to be seen how the extreme right-wing government of Netanyahu will react to this humiliation. Given its highly fragile nature, given the furious anti-government protests on the streets as well as the hostile opposition parties in the Knesset and given the very fragile domestical political situation in the U.S. – Israel’s most important ally – everything is possible. Netanyahu might wage a full-scale war in the north, a desperate long-distance strike against the Houthis … or he might look for a ceasefire. We can not know but it is likely that today’s strike on Tel Aviv will trigger some kind of reaction.
7. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) reiterates its unconditional support for the Palestinian resistance. We stand for the military victory of the resistance factions and the defeat of the Zionist monster without lending political support for Hamas and other petty-bourgeois nationalist or Islamist organisations. Likewise, we side with Hezbollah and other Lebanese resistance forces as well as with Ansar Allah in any confrontation with Israel. The only way forward is the revolutionary destruction of the Israeli Apartheid state and the creation of a free and red Palestine from the River to the Sea.