This Is Our Answer to Katz’s Threat to Kill Sayyed Al-Houthi

By Abdel Bari Atwan, Rai al-Youm 

The least that can be said about the threats issued by “Israeli” War Minister Yisrael Katz—threatening to assassinate Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi and to raise the “Israeli” flag over Sana’a—is that they reflect a state of delirium that even psychiatrists would find difficult to treat.

What is striking is that Katz made these threats only days after the failure of 12 “Israeli” aircraft to assassinate resistance figure Khalil Al-Hayya and several Hamas leaders abroad by bombing their headquarters in Doha, Qatar. That failure exposed the myth of “Israeli” intelligence superiority- once epitomized by the assassinations of Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, foremost among them The Master of Martyrs Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and by the pager attacks whose first anniversary is being marked these days. This supposed superiority has been rapidly eroding, particularly in the wake of successful post-war reviews.

It may be useful to remind Katz and his superior, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the ones forcing seven million “Israeli” settlers into shelters and train tunnels almost every night are the Yemeni “Palestine 1” and “Palestine 2” hypersonic missiles, equipped with multiple warheads. It was also Yemenis who effectively shut down the two main airports of the occupation state—"Lod and Ramon” Airports in Occupied Al-Naqab [Negev]—on a near-permanent basis, caused the bankruptcy of the “Eilat” port on the Red Sea, and only hours ago sent drones that reached one of “Eilat’s” hotels after penetrating all aerial, radar, and missile defenses. 

These are the Yemenis who have never abandoned the fighters in Gaza, and who closed the Red Sea to your ships and your allies.

It will not be the “Israeli” flag flying over Sana’a, but rather the Palestinian flag flying over the masts of Occupied Al-Quds and every occupied Palestinian city. A state that has exhausted its full arsenal—ranging from missiles and tanks to campaigns of genocide, starvation, ethnic cleansing, and internal displacement—in an effort to crush the resistance and subdue the Palestinian people in Gaza for nearly 23 months, will not dare to send even a single tank into Sana’a. This is the same Sana’a that defeated the United States, forcing it to beg for a ceasefire to halt missile strikes on its aircraft carriers and naval frigates in the Red Sea—just as it defeated every empire before it throughout history.

Those whose so-called feats in Yemen amount only to striking civilian aircraft at Sana’a’s civilian airport — and whose air defenses failed to stop the majority of Yemeni missiles and drones — should cease issuing hollow, deceptive threats. First, on the agenda should be recovering their humiliated “Israeli” vessel Galaxy, now anchored in Hodeidah port.

For the “Star of David” to fly over Sana’a, as “General” Katz threatens, he would have to send forces to occupy the city — and we promise him that the Yemenis will give those forces the reception they deserve.

In conclusion, we tell “General” Katz that the era in which you flaunted your intelligence superiority and its showy operations is beginning to crumble, slipping from one defeat into another — from Al-Aqsa Flood, through the very significant failure in Doha, to the operation by Jordanian hero Abd al-Muttalib al-Qaisi, who penetrated “Israeli” intelligence, carried out his jihadi operation and killed two “Israeli” soldiers at the Karama crossing on the Jordanian-Palestinian border.

Let us not forget the ongoing acts of heroism and sustained resistance in the Gaza Strip over the past two years. The coming days will bring many similar courageous breakthroughs. Time will tell.