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CNN Reporter Flies Aboard Israeli Tanker during Yemen Strike

(CNN) Nic Robertson - Aboard a 50-year-old Boeing 707, I am the first foreign journalist to be taken on an IDF combat mission more than a thousand miles from Israel aboard a fighter jet refuel tanker. Israel's invitation to join this mission came with no detail about the plane's destination. For an hour and a half, Israeli F35 fighter jets closed in behind the tanker to refuel. When the squadron commander shows me a map of the mission, I realize we are on the way to Hodeidah Port in Yemen. IDF spokesman Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani tells me that over the past two weeks, the Houthis have fired three long-range missiles at Israel. Shoshani told me the message of the Israeli attack was for Iran too. I ask the lead pilot on the tanker, a reservist veteran aviator, about his feelings when civilians are killed. We don't want to kill civilians, he tells me, and we use all the intelligence we have to avoid it. We are targeting the Houthis, he tells me. They are firing missiles at our civilians, endangering them. This embed wasn't just an object lesson in the lengths Israel will go to punish its enemies, but real-time evidence that dormant adversaries are emerging from the shadows, and Israel's war to thwart them is becoming regional.
2024-10-01 00:00:00
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