Houthi provocations will need to be dealt with

Until the October 7 massacre and the ensuing war, the Yemen-based, virulently antisemitic Houthis were a distant threat to most Israelis.

Most people had heard the Iran-backed Houthis in the context of the ongoing civil war in Yemen but did not pay them much attention.

With Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank, and Iran keen on setting up bases for proxies in Syria, Israel had closer, more immediate threats to worry about.

That was the thinking pre-October 7. In the post-October 7 world, however, the Houthis have emerged not as some distant threat but as a real and immediate one.