Not for the first time, the Associated Press has erased Houthi attacks against Israel. Earlier this year, CAMERA prompted correction at the leading news agency after it wrongly reported that the Iranian-backed Houthis of Yemen “sat out” the June 2025 war between Iran and Israel.
Then, for the first time since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began a month ago, AP again ignored earlier Houthi attacks, grossly misleading in the first sentence of the March 28 article (“Yemen’s Houthis claim responsibility for missile attack on Israel, their first since war started” also in Spanish):
Israel’s military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen toward Israel early Saturday, the first time it had faced fire from that country.
While the March 28 attack was the Houthis’ first attack on Israel during the U.S.-Israel war with Iran (as the headline rightly notes), the Houthis have previously fired on Israel hundreds of times. According to Institute for National Security Studies, the Houthis launched some 500 missile and UAV attacks on Israel from Oct. 7, 2023 to Feb. 22, 2026. Therefore, the article’s first sentence is inaccurate. A precise headline does not exonerate the erroneous claim within the accompanying article.
A Tel Aviv building damaged from a Houthi drone attack, August 2024 (Photo by Bar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Furthermore, while the article provides explicit information on previous Houthi attacks on other targets in the region, and notes the terror organization’s history of drone attacks on Israel, it ignores Houthi missile fire against the Jewish state.
Thus, the article partially reports:
Attacks on vessels during the Israel-Hamas war upended shipping in the Red Sea, through which about $1 trillion worth of goods passed each year before the war. The rebels also fired drones at Israel
Other important background about earlier Houthi attacks in the region which the article does rightly include is:
The Houthi rebels attacked over 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two vessels and killing four sailors, from November 2023 until January 2025.
CAMERA has contact AP to request clarification of the article’s erroneous statement that Israel faced fire from the Houthis in Yemen “for the first time.” Stay tuned for any updates.
See also “AP Clarifies that Houthi Missile Attack on ‘Israeli Military Targets’ Hit School“
For the Spanish version of this article, see CAMERA Español.