As Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and attempts to target Israel escalate — with growing implications for international shipping and the global economy — there’s growing agreement among pro-Israel advocates in Washington that the Biden administration should redesignate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. But many say that the FTO designation is far from enough, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

The latest: Tuesday brought a flurry of new developments in counter-Houthi efforts, including the formal announcement of an expanded multinational maritime task force to protect Red Sea shipping lanes from Houthi attacks. Bahrain was the only Arab country that publicly joined that effort, but several of the U.S.’s Gulf Arab allies are reportedly privately participating. And the administration is also said to be considering military action in Yemen against the Houthis. But the Biden administration has yet to reverse one of its early foreign policy decisions, withdrawing the Iran-backed Houthis’ designation as a terrorist organization, a move that reversed a last-minute Trump administration edict.

Time for a change: William Wechsler, the senior director of the Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council, told JI that “to pull back a rushed, last-minute designation and to try to give a new diplomatic approach a chance was not an irrational decision for a new administration.” But he said the time for that course of action has passed. “Sometimes when people repeatedly tell you who and what they are, you actually have to listen to them,” Wechsler said.

Next steps: “The Houthi attacks are likely to keep coming because they enjoy a reliable supply of Iranian weapons,” Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. “And they’ve been able to conduct these attacks with no consequences…. It’s just a matter of time, I fear, until you’re going to have some Americans getting killed because the Houthis feel they can conduct cost-free attacks.” Bowman said the U.S. should hit back at sites inside Yemen from where attacks are being launched, or weapons are being produced, as well as make greater efforts to interdict Iranian weapons smuggling.

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On Capitol Hill: Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Katie Britt (R-AL), John Barrasso (R-WY), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Tim Scott (R-SC), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) introduced a resolution condemning Iranian proxy attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and calling on the administration to “increase pressure” and do more to deter Iran and “declare that further provocations… will be met with a swift and decisive response.”

In the chaotic months since Hamas’ massacre and the ensuing war, there has been one mainstay for Israelis: IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, standing in front of two Israeli flags and speaking to the nation. Each evening, Hagari recounts the day’s events in plain language, bowing his head in memory of soldiers killed in battle and describing ground operations deep inside Gaza and airstrikes against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Then, he takes questions from reporters. Hagari’s nightly press briefings, which began on Oct. 7, have made him a wartime star in Israel in a way that no IDF spokesperson has been in many years, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.

Pop culture: Israel’s public broadcaster Kan shared a video by a comedian about how “everyone loves Daniel Hagari: Left, right, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, secular, religious – and even men. No one is in the consensus as much as Daniel Hagari.” Israeli singer-songwriter Aya Korem rewrote her popular song “Yonatan Shapira” to be about the IDF spokesman, who, she sang, caused a “humanitarian crisis in my heart.” A popular meme being sent around on WhatsApp in recent weeks reads: “Why are women attracted to Daniel Hagari, you ask? Because he is the only man who bothers to update them every day, at the same hour, [with] what he did that day, what he plans to do tomorrow and at the end, he answers their questions.”

Former spokesman’s grade: Former Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai was perhaps the most iconic spokesperson in the IDF’s history, earning the nickname “the national soother” amid the threat of chemical attacks from Iraq during the Gulf War, and calming Israelis with his catchphrase: “Drink water.” Shai told JI he gives Hagari a top grade. “He broadcasts honesty, purposefulness and practicality,” Shai said. “He isn’t talking nonsense and isn’t trying to flatter anyone. He’s just presenting the true picture within the existing limitations.”

Background: Hagari, 47, known to his friends as Danny, is a married father of four, the youngest of whom is one year old. He grew up in Tel Aviv as the eldest of three siblings. His brother Ben is an acclaimed video artist based in New York. His other brother, Yoni, lives in the rehabilitation village ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran for people with physical and mental disabilities, which the IDF spokesman visited during the war. There has been much made in Israeli media of the fact that Hagari majored in theater (as well as biology) in high school and starred in school plays as a teen, leading commentators to speculate that his experience made him a natural at the spokesman job. He also spent many hours as a child behind the scenes at the famed Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv, where his mother ran the subscription office. Hagari enlisted in the IDF in 1995 and climbed the ranks of Shayetet 13, the equivalent of the Navy SEALs, becoming its commander in 2019. Before leading the Shayetet, Hagari served as a top aide to IDF Chiefs of staff Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, both currently members of the war cabinet. 

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During a quick visit to Israel on Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was armed with the same agenda as the rest of the senior American officials who have traveled to Israel in recent weeks: conveying American support for Israel as it confronts Hamas, cautioning Israel to avoid civilian casualties and pressing for more humanitarian assistance to Gaza. And like many of the other top Biden administration officials engaging with Israel, Austin was also tasked with discussing another sensitive issue, this one taking place not in Gaza but the West Bank: violence and harassment directed at Palestinians from Israelis in the contested territory. Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced that the U.S. would be taking the unusual step of punitive action against these settlers by restricting the ability of individuals involved in such violence to obtain a visa to travel to the United States. But many questions about its implementation — and whom it will actually impact — remain unanswered, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch and Lahav Harkov report.

Accountability: “The Israeli government must do more to act against the unprecedented rise in extremist settler violence, including by holding perpetrators accountable,” a State Department spokesperson told JI on Tuesday. The visa policy covers both Israeli and Palestinian “extremists,” but it is more likely to have an effect on the Israeli settlers, since Israelis gained the ability to travel to the U.S. visa-free earlier this year. They have also been a more frequent target of U.S. officials’ public remarks in recent weeks. 

Not named: It’s still unclear who the policy will affect. Individuals who could end up having their visas revoked, or future visa applications denied, won’t have to be convicted of a crime. The State Department spokesperson said that “information is being gathered by U.S. government personnel at our embassy” and in Washington, and said the ban has targeted “dozens” of individuals, but declined to share any specifics. Several human rights groups that track settler violence told JI that while they track these incidents, they do not identify the perpetrators by name. 

Already in the works: The timing of the announcement of the policy, coming weeks into the Israel-Hamas war, suggested a connection between Washington’s policy toward settlers and its broader posturing toward Israel, particularly as the White House urges Jerusalem to constrain its war efforts. Two U.S. sources with knowledge of the creation of the visa policy told JI that it was already underway months before the Hamas attack. Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom first reported on the matter in December 2022.

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The social media giant Meta on Tuesday offered a window into its handling of content related to the Israeli-Hamas war, as the body tasked with overseeing its content moderation decisions called for Facebook and Instagram to allow more graphic posts about the war to be shared in real time, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Under review: The Oversight Board, an independent entity created by Meta to review its actions removing or hiding certain content, issued two decisions on Tuesday — its first since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel. Each was a response to users’ appeals, after posts (one showcasing a video of Israelis being taken hostage, another depicting the bloody aftermath of an Israeli strike in Gaza) were removed for violating Meta policies limiting the sharing of videos depicting terrorism or violent content. 

Wrongful removal: The decisions revealed that after Oct. 7, Meta lowered the bar for when it would automatically remove content that might violate the platforms’ standards on hate speech, violence, incitement and harassment, in response to what it described as “an exceptional surge in violent and graphic content.” But the Oversight Board determined that the change resulted in the preemptive removal of content that users should have been allowed to post. 

Slow response: The two decisions were the first decided under a new expedited screening process from the Oversight Board, illuminating how the slow-moving body — created in 2020 — has struggled to respond during fast-paced conflicts like this one. Meta’s bureaucratic web of content-moderation policies, fine-tuned by the company as it has faced years of external pressure over its approach to trust and safety, was not entirely equipped to handle the nuanced reasons people post violent content. Prior decisions from the board related to antisemitism also reveal how Meta’s policies often mistakenly flag content that is calling out or highlighting violent speech, rather than supporting it. 

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