JERUSALEM – On day 345 of the Swords of Iron war, more than 2 million Israelis woke up to the sound of sirens triggered by an incoming missile and pinging rocket alert apps at approximately 6:30 a.m. as Yemen’s barbarous Iranian proxy – the Houthi – fired a ballistic missile toward Israel’s densely populated center.

This is actual footage showing the place where the missile from Yemen fell in central Israel near Kfar Daniel and Gimzo not far from Ben Gurion International Airport. Shrapnel hit the railroad station in Modi’in-Makkabbim-Re’ut where my daughter lives with her two boys. She… pic.twitter.com/7jyZis1fpc

— Marc Zell (@GOPIsrael) September 15, 2024

It is not exactly clear what happened – although it seems Israel’s array of defensive aerial missiles – such as the Arrow and David’s Sling systems which are designed for the longer ballistic missiles – did not succeed in taking down the projectile before it entered Israeli airspace. Later reports suggested the missile may have broken up as it flew over central Israel – although it was not certain whether interceptors caused this. There will be an IDF investigation into the failure of these systems to work as they should.

The Arrow missile defense system did bring the missile down, although shrapnel from the interception fell near Gezer – in the foothills of the Judean Mountains, and roughly equidistant between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv – as well as potentially three other areas. These included a train station near to Modi’in, with a population of some 90,000, and Rehovot, population 133,000, and home to the Weizmann Institute, one of Israel’s foremost scientific research institutions.

The Houthi terrorists are at it again – firing missiles at Israel.

Each missile costs more than $1 million, meanwhile more than 10,000,000 Yemeni children are starving.

Just antisemitic terrorists doing antisemitic terrorist things.

— Luai Ahmed (@JustLuai) September 15, 2024

Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service, said nine people were lightly injured running to safe rooms or attempting to seek shelter. The attack marked the first time in months most people in Israel’s center have heard a rocket alert siren, and followed opaque Houthi threats about retaliation for the widespread damage Israel caused to the Hodeidah port in July.

Shrapnel fell at the train station in Modi’in. pic.twitter.com/wfUeAeQZrO

— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) September 15, 2024

Some hours after the attack, Yahya Saria, a spokesperson for the Houthi rebels, claimed the group had used a hypersonic missile aimed at Jaffa, a weapon allegedly capable of flying some 1,300 miles in about 11-and-a-half minutes. Traditional intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) travel at several thousand miles an hour.

The Houthi Terrorist Group in Western Yemen has released a Statement regarding today’s Ballistic Missile Attack on Central Israel, which they claim Responsibility for saying it was carried out using a “New Hypersonic Ballistic Missile” which traveled over 2,000 Kilometers in only… pic.twitter.com/HDKogBFMCF

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) September 15, 2024

Ahead of Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the early morning ballistic missile attack. “The Houthis should have already known that we exact a heavy price for any attempt to harm us. Anyone who needs a reminder is welcome to visit the port of Hodeidah,” Netanyahu said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Remarks at the Start of the Government Meeting:

“We are in a multi-front campaign against Iran’s axis of evil, which is striving for our destruction.https://t.co/Kto1KppVQE pic.twitter.com/0CDycl03XN

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) September 15, 2024

Netanyahu also addressed the ongoing situation in the north, and in his remarks addressed those many thousands of people who have not returned to their homes in locales close to the Lebanese border. “The current situation will not continue,” he declared. “This requires a change in the balance of forces on our northern border. We will do whatever is necessary to return our residents securely to their homes.”

Israel’s strike on the main Houthi port was in response to both provocation and escalation from the Shiite terrorists. They launched a suicide drone, which struck a Tel Aviv apartment block, killing one man. The Red Sea Islamists had also sent more than 200 other drones Israel’s way, nearly all of which had been intercepted. With patience having run out, the Israel Air Force launched a daring and complex attack on the Hodeidah port, which involved at least 20 fighter jets as well as refueling aircraft, and traversed a distance of more than 1,100 miles – which as commentators pointed out at the time is further away than Tehran.

Meanwhile, in Israel’s north, Hezbollah, another arm of the fanatical Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, continues to see just how far Israel can be pushed without inviting a more serious military response. Having fired some 60 rockets at the northern Galilee city of Safed – one of Judaism’s four holiest places and the birthplace of Jewish mysticism – on Saturday, the terrorists followed it up Sunday morning with several volleys of dozens of rockets.

In the wake of the Houthi attack on Israel this morning there have already been rounds of attacks by Hezbollah, illustrating the multi-front war by Iranian-backed groups that are seeking to ring Israel with attacks and threats. The proxies are not deterred and they want this to… pic.twitter.com/zFqmsscJgB

— Seth Frantzman (@sfrantzman) September 15, 2024

Does attack leave more questions than answers?

While the plain facts of the attack are quite straightforward, the fallout from it is far trickier to decipher. Answering them will necessitate attention from serious minds, not those intent on waltzing along on joy and vibes.

Where is the United States?

While the two U.S. presidential candidates bicker and snipe, amid the ignominious failure of the “fact-checking corporate media,” real lives – including my own and those of my family – are at stake, as America has seriously taken its eye off the ball, and is continuously played by Tehran.

Not only has it lost focus, amid an incumbent president in Joe Biden who now spends more time on the beach topping up his tan than he does on matters of state, its listlessness and betrayal of its regional allies is becoming deadly serious. In Biden’s absence it doesn’t help to have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is confusingly by her own admission “the last person in the room,” as well as the person who is distanced enough from Biden’s failures to not have to own them.

Somebody needs to own them, and the United States’ retrenchment from the Middle East is giving greater credence to the saying “Power… hates a vacuum.” Questions such as, “Why have the Houthi been left largely unmolested to target international shipping in the Red Sea?” Much of what makes the free world actually free was the U.S. taking up the mantle from the deposed British Royal Navy following the Second World War and guaranteeing freedom of the seas. Would the U.S. allow Somali pirates such freedom to act? What makes the Houthi pirates so different, other than they are so clearly backed by Iran, with which the Biden White House seems to have such an intertwined relationship.

Whether the isolationists like it or not, bad actors with nefarious intent are elbowing America out of the way, and once lost – or perhaps this is the most galling point, given away – influence will be nigh on impossible to restore.

Where to now for Israeli deterrence?

While the war in Gaza, three weeks shy of its one-year anniversary, drags on, Israel has actually witnessed significant successes on the battlefield, including intelligence-gathering, dismantlement of a large proportion of the underground tunnel network (but by no means all), and a significant degrading of Hamas’ fighting military strength. But it has come at a cost, in men and women, material, and increasingly deleterious downward pressure on a somewhat sputtering economy. Remember, Israel’s is a largely conscript army. Regular troops are fighting alongside hundreds of thousands of reservists – people who have left their families and day-jobs – sometimes for months at a time – to protect the country. The effect of this should be obvious.

Drawing the lens out further, however, Israel used to be able to call upon the deterrence of its military might to cow enemies from attacking it. That is not the situation now – far from it. If anything, Israel’s response – or lack thereof – has only emboldened the likes of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi in Yemen. And always lurking in the shadows is Iran, pulling the strings of its terrorist proxies from its Tehran eyrie.

Reports surfaced on Saturday which claimed Israel was in the advanced stages of planning operations against Hezbollah in the next weeks or low single-digit months. While some might welcome this news, for others, especially the tens of thousands of internally displaced people from Israel’s north, it is a decision – if it proves final – has come way too late. Hezbollah has already understood – despite losing nearly 500 operatives in the last 11 months – it can push at the margins of Israel’s resistance and not receive too significant a blowback. One obvious counter to this is the Israeli strike which exterminated Fuad Shukr, one of the most senior Hezbollah leaders to be eliminated since Imad Mughniyeh, which was in reprisal for the missile attack that killed 12 Druze kids in Israel’s Golan.

Israel’s enemies have made it abundantly clear – and on innumerable occasions – what their goal is. They are also dictating the pace of events, striking at will, attempting to normalize daily attacks as the cost of living in the Middle East. This does not seem sustainable over the long term, so logically it appears something must give. Israel’s tactical gains in Gaza may arguably be for nought if the strategic necessities of fighting Iranian proxies across six or seven different – albeit connected – arenas, become urgent… as they increasingly seem to be.