The Houthis ineffective sleep deprivation tactic

Imagine that you’ve gone to bed late after a hard day’s work, only to be awakened at 3 a.m., just when you’re sleeping most soundly, by the blaring country-wide alarm, warning you to go into your bomb shelter or safe room. Now imagine this going on night after night.

It is the same tactic employed by anyone trying to break the enemy who has suffered from extreme sleep deprivation, leaving most everyone at their worst. This is what has been going on for weeks as Houthi rockets are being launched daily, many in the middle of the night.

Considered by some as a form of torture, since it affects people both from a physical and mental standpoint, it has been successfully used as a method to extract confessions from individuals.  

But given the ineffectiveness of the Houthis, when compared to the Israeli military, rockets launched in the middle of the night are the weapons to which they resort, employed to wear down the entire Israeli population, because once their missiles are directed towards Israel, even if they are intercepted, either through Israel’s Iron Dome technology or the U.S. THAAD Defense System, no one can predict where the fallout of these shattered rocket pieces will land.  

It is why an alarm is sounded from nearly one end of the country to the other, often covering a territory of several hours’ distance, to make sure that no one is caught off guard. This heavy debris is just as capable of killing a person or wreaking the same structural destruction as the impact of a rocket itself. 

Consequently, much of the Israeli population is being woken up, from their peaceful sleep, leaving them tired and irritable the next day. It is no way to live, but it is the present situation under which we are existing. 

Of course, these attacks are motivated by the goal of crippling our international airport as well as the port of Haifa, and since the attack of May 4th, when a ballistic missile succeeded in bypassing the failed interceptions, a rocket hit the perimeter of the main terminal of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, empowering the Houthis to believe that their aspirations had finally been realized.  

It was then that they declared, that “the attack was a show of support for the oppressed Palestinian people.” They further went on to say that “these operations will continue and will not stop unless the Israeli aggression on Gaza stops and the blockade is lifted.”

Following the airport attack, Israel launched their own air strikes to send a loud and clear message that this will not be tolerated. Hitting hard at the Yemeni city of Hodeida, Israel’s goal was to prevent weapons and military equipment from continuing to be provided to them by Iran, who are, in effect, their proxy fighters.  

Their response was that “the aggressive Zionist-American raids on civilian facilities will not affect our military operations against the Zionist enemy entity.” Of course, predictably the immediate international response came by way of airline companies canceling flights until further notice, leaving only a couple of airlines, such as El Al, Arkia and Air Haifa to pick up the slack.  But as summer vacation approaches, the anticipated large demand for flights abroad has made it almost impossible to book flights to many destinations.

It goes without saying that these events have seriously impacted the tourism industry, a main staple of the Jewish homeland, which derives much of its economic boost from the many groups who faithfully return year after year. That has been significantly curtailed. This, too, is a tactic in the ongoing fight to bring down the only Jewish democracy in the Middle East.  

Equally predictable, has been the response of Israelis, whose indomitable spirit remains undaunted despite all of this. The construction of new skyscrapers continues, people go to and from work, shop at our many malls, send their children to school and are undeterred from going to the beach or restaurants. In short, society goes on.

Yet somehow, the Houthis believe that they are able to break our spirit by way of sleep deprivation. It will take much more than that for Israelis who waited 2,000 years to finally attain the realization of their own homeland or give up on it by abandoning the dream just because we’ve lost a few hours of sleep.

In other words, these Houthi attacks are just another futile attempt at getting us to walk away from the land which God gave us as an inheritance, because we are a determined people whose destiny is not trivialized or dismissed.  We have endured the worst over the course of millennia – every type of persecution known to man, including the stripping of our basic human rights, exile, burning at the stake, the ovens of Auschwitz and, now, the constant barrage of missiles which have attacked us on many fronts.

All of these have served to make us stronger and more resolved to press forward, build a country which is second to none and strive to create a good and fulfilling life, not only for ourselves and future generations, but also for the entire world which has benefitted from our innovation and know-how - a moral and ethical charge to which we are committed.

History has recorded that each time a seemingly formidable enemy has come against us, we have prevailed with God’s help. Ironically, the evil that was planned for us often ended up on the heads of those who invested their energies on our demise. It is reflected in the biblical stories of Haman being hanged on his own gallows and the Egyptian army being swallowed up by the same sea that opened up to allow safe passage of the Israelites to cross over to the other side.  

Today, it has manifested itself in the killing of the Sinwar brothers, Nasrallah and Deif, all evil men who had a hand in plotting our destruction but who are no more. You would think that this would alert our enemies to the fact that the moment they conjure up our annihilation, it’s only a matter of time before they meet up with their own fate.  

So, they’ll have to come up with a bit more than the sleep deprivation which they are inflicting upon us, because, in the end, it will be they who sleep in the dust of eternity as we continue to live!