Daily Kickoff: Senators blast State Dept refusal to redesignate Houthis as an FTO
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we cover yesterday’s pager attack in Lebanon, have the scoop on a State Department letter to Rep. Ritchie Torres arguing against redesignating the Houthis as a Foreign Terror Organization and bring you inside the room at yesterday’s chaotic Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on hate crimes. We also have the exclusive on an effort by Sens. Joni Ernst and Kirsten Gillibrand to improve computer network integration between the U.S. and Middle East allies and cover comments by Vice President Kamala Harris to the National Association of Black Journalists defending the Biden administration’s withholding of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Dan Glickman, Steve Cohen and Nikki Haley.
What We’re Watching
- Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is set to receive the Defender of Israel award at the Zionist Organization of America’s gala tonight in Philadelphia.
- Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will be in Brooklyn today for a Harris campaign fundraiser billed as “A Brooklyn Bash for the Harris Victory Fund.”
- The 2024 Aspen Cyber Summit kicks off this morning in Washington. Speakers include FBI Director Chris Wray, the National Security Agency’s David Luber, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. We’ll be watching for any comments on yesterday’s remote explosions against Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon.
- The National Press Club is hosting the relatives of the seven remaining American hostages in Gaza this morning as part of its Headliners Newsmaker series.
- Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) is slated to participate in a fireside chat hosted by the N7 Initiative this morning about her Abraham Accords-related legislation. More below on the legislation she is expected to discuss.
- Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in Egypt for the ongoing U.S.-Egypt Strategic Dialogue, set to conclude tomorrow.
What You Should Know
It was like something out of an action movie — across Lebanon, thousands of pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah exploded simultaneously, injuring, in some cases mortally, their carriers, Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss reports.
Israeli journalist and “Fauda” co-creator Avi Issacharoff, who is in the middle of writing the show’s fifth season, wrote on X hours after the attack that nothing the show’s writers could produce “comes close to reality.”
The attack was an operation months in the making. Members of the U.S.-designated terror group pivoted to using pagers earlier this year, amid concerns from Hezbollah leadership that cellphones were too easy to track. The thousands of pagers that had been distributed to Hezbollah members, The New York Timesreports, were manufactured by a Taiwanese company in Hungary and had explosive material added to them before they were delivered to Lebanon.
The attack, according to Al-Monitor, was likely hastened after some Hezbollah officials became suspicious of the covert operation.
Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, who was blinded in one eye and injured in the other, according to both Iranian state media and The New York Times.
In a column examining the implications of the attack, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius called it a “brilliant operation” from a technological standpoint but cautioned that it “signals the beginning of a new and very dangerous era in cyberwarfare.”
The explosions came a day after White House senior advisor Amos Hochstein was in Israel for meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Israel’s government had updated its war aims the night prior to include as a primary objective the return of displaced residents of northern Israel to their homes.
The Biden administration said it had not been informed in advance of the attack, with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller saying that U.S. officials are “collecting information in the same way that journalists are across the world to gather the facts about what might have happened.” Read more about the White House’s response here.
In a call between Gallant and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin shortly before the pagers exploded, Gallant told Austin that Israel was preparing to conduct an operation in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has vowed revenge for the attack, much as it did for the July strike that killed senior official Fuad Shukr. That retaliation — meant to be a strike against Israel that was thwarted by an Israeli counterattack last month, did not occur until weeks after Shukr’s assassination. Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah is expected to give a speech later today.
A source familiar with Israeli thinking told Ignatius, “When Hezbollah considers how to respond, they should consider that Israel may have more surprises for them. And Israel does.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met this morning for a security briefing, Herzog’s spokesman said in a statement.
In the meantime, a number of airlines, including Lufthansa and Air France, have again halted flights to and from Israel. Lufthansa also nixed its Tehran routes, while Air France canceled its flights in and out of Beirut.
scoop
State Department says Houthis should not be redesignated as a foreign terrorist organization
The State Department is continuing to rebuff bipartisan pressure from lawmakers to redesignate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, despite the Iran-backed group’s continued attacks on Israel and shipping lanes in the Red Sea, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Their reasoning: In a letter to Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) on Tuesday, a State Department official said the administration opposes reimposing the FTO designation on the Houthis, saying that doing so could be an impediment to groups that may have to do business with the Houthis to provide basic supplies inside Yemen. “The Houthis control ports and distribution access, thus an FTO designation would have major implications on food security and basic needs of the population because approximately 90 percent of products to meet basic needs in Yemen are commercially imported,” the letter reads.
Congressional reaction: The news elicited bipartisan condemnation from Capitol Hill. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) called the decision “absolutely wrong” and said the Houthis “must be designated” as an FTO. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) questioned the administration’s refusal, given that “the Houthis are armed by Iran and are actively shooting at American sailors.”
on the trail
Harris ‘entirely supportive’ of hold on large munitions while standing by Israel’s right to self-defense
Speaking at a gathering hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated her support for Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas while adding that she is “entirely supportive” of President Joe Biden’s decision in May to withhold certain large, offensive munitions from Israel as leverage, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
On the record: “One of the things that we have done that I am entirely supportive of is the pause that we’ve put on the 2,000-pound bombs, so there is some leverage that we have had and used,” Harris said. “But ultimately, the thing that is going to unlock everything else in that region is getting this [cease-fire] deal done.”
chaotic conversation
Senate hearing on antisemitism thrown into chaos as anti-Israel agitators shout obscenities
The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on hate crimes devolved into chaos on Tuesday, with members engaging in partisan shouting matches over the hearing’s broad focus amid repeated disruptions by anti-Israel agitators in the crowd. The crowd at Tuesday’s hearing, which was the first hearing in the Senate addressing antisemitism since Oct. 7, was largely made up of people in keffiyehs, several of whom had to be escorted out by Capitol Police officers for shouting profanities. One man shouted “F*** Israelis” and that he did not care about “f***ing Jews” during Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) questioning of witnesses, saying that lawmakers should talk about the “dead Palestinians,” Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.
Missing the mark: “I would make a note for the record. This hearing is about hate. It includes antisemitism as well as hatred toward other people,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the chairman of the committee and the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said after the incident disrupted the hearing. “Who gets up and yells ‘F***ing Jews’ at an antisemitism hearing? I think it proves our point,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the top Republican on the committee, remarked to JI just after proceedings concluded.
Latest on AAA holdup: Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) confirmed to JI that he spoke recently to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who told him that the Antisemitism Awareness Act would receive a Senate floor vote before the end of the year, but Gottheimer said Schumer hadn’t provided further specifics. Schumer’s office has declined to comment on his conversation with Gottheimer.
exclusive
Ernst, Gillibrand introduce legislation to enhance tech sharing among Middle East partners
Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) are set to introduce legislation on Wednesday seeking to improve computer network integration among the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What it does: The bill, the AI ACCORD Act, would require the secretary of defense to submit to Congress a strategy to enhance cooperation among the U.S. and its Middle East allies “to improve use of partner-sharing network capabilities to facilitate joint defense efforts.” The bill would also establish a “forum for warfighters and combatant commands on artificial intelligence,” to promote coordination and exchange among the U.S. and its allies in the AI field.
scoop
Vance downplayed Muslim Brotherhood in newly uncovered blog post
Shortly after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a 2011 revolt, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the GOP nominee for vice president, downplayed uncertainties over the Muslim Brotherhood, which had long been banned by Egypt’s government, amid the Islamist movement’s emergence as a dominant political force, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Sanguine assessment: “The Muslim Brotherhood is powerful and organized, but it is neither the dominating force in modern Egypt nor the radical organization that Westerners fear,” Vance wrote in a February 2011 blog post. “The Muslim Brotherhood may have produced al-Qaeda’s intellectual leader, but it has decidedly moved on.” His sanguine comments run contrary to former President Donald Trump’s own assessment of the group, whose offshoots include Hamas. In 2019, Trump pushed to designate the Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
food for thought
Former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman laments post-Oct. 7 damage to Israeli farming
For the past year, Hamas’ massacre in southern Israel has been widely reported. But often overlooked has been Hamas’ attack on Israel’s agriculture, with the deliberate goal of destroying Israel’s food security by attacking the Negev farming communities that pioneered the country’s agricultural success. On Oct. 7, greenhouses and crops were burned to the ground, irrigation systems destroyed and farm animals killed. In particular, Israel’s dairy production was severely hit, as were areas where much of Israel’s produce is grown. Eleven months later, Dan Glickman, who served as the U.S. secretary of agriculture in the Clinton administration from 1995 until 2001, decided to see for himself “what the status is of damage done to Israel after these attacks,” he told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Haley Cohen, in a recent interview for Jewish Insider, fresh off his trip to southern Israel.
Understanding the scope: Glickman, who was the first Jewish secretary of agriculture, wanted to understand “how serious is the damage and can it be mitigated?” Following meetings with Israeli Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, food and agriculture scientists at Hebrew University and the Volcani Institute and working alongside the nonprofit ReGrow Israel, which recently received a $12.5 million grant from Jewish Federations of North America, Glickman concluded that Israel is “building back,” but “it’s not what it was [before] taking a direct hit in the Hamas attacks.”
Worthy Reads
Parsing Policy: The New York Times’ Bret Stephens raises concerns about Vice President Kamala Harris’ familiarity with foreign policy issues as he considers whom to cast his ballot for in November. “It should not be hard for Harris to demonstrate that she can give detailed answers to urgent policy questions. Or to express a sense, beyond a few canned phrases, of how she sees the American interest in a darkening world. Or to articulate a politics of genuine inclusion that reaches out to tens of millions of distrustful voters. Or to prove that she’s more than another factory-settings liberal Democrat whose greatest virtue, like her greatest fault, is that she won’t step too far from the conventional wisdom.” [NYTimes]
Campus Concern: In Tablet, Jay Greene argues against the increasing enrollment in American universities of foreign students, some of whom, he argues, are negatively influencing campus life and education. “What was healthy at a low dose is turning poisonous at much higher levels. As foreign enrollments reach critical mass, the direction of the cultural exchanges taking place on campus has reversed. U.S. students are starting to take political opinions from countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, and others whose governments and people are hardly known for their adherence to liberal values like democracy, free speech, legal equality of the sexes, opposition to racism and antisemitism, and other basic rules of the road in Western societies. At a certain level of foreign enrollment, our leading universities stop seeing themselves as the incubators of the American elite and start seeing themselves as incubators of a global elite, which sometimes involves teaching hatred of America and its values.” [Tablet]
Finding Fetterman: Mishpacha Magazine’s Gedalia Guttentag interviews Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who in the last year has become one of the Democrats most publicly outspoken in his support for Israel. “October 7 seems to have touched John Fetterman deeply, almost personally. In the victims and the hostages, he sees ordinary people who could have been his family. There’s something visceral about the way that almost a year later he talks about the horror inflicted by Hamas. And even without the fact that the transcription software he relies on post-stroke is easily thrown off by someone interrupting him, there’s a relentless quality to his monologues about Israel. ‘When I heard how they tortured, mutilated, and murdered families, I thought to myself that if that was my family, I’d say that that kind of evil should not be allowed to endure. It has to be destroyed. And I can’t imagine why the entire world wouldn’t be appalled by that kind of barbarism. We can’t forget about the truths of this war,’ he continues. ‘That Hamas started this, carried out the kind of massacre that hasn’t happened since the Holocaust, and Israel has been forced to respond. Let’s never forget that Hamas is responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian people. They don’t have a spiritual connection to the Palestinian people whose death and suffering they deem a necessary sacrifice.’” [Mishpacha]
Word on the Street
Vice President Kamala Harris is running ads targeting Muslim-majority areas of Detroit that highlight her past remarks that she “will not be silent about human suffering in Gaza”…
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley inked a deal with SiriusXM to host a weekly politics show on the platform…
Former President Donald Trump is expected to go to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn on Thursday; Secret Service advance staff were seen at the kosher Gottlieb’s Restaurant in the neighborhood…
A bipartisan group of 23 lawmakers wrote to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Tuesday urging it to investigate the rise of antisemitism on college campuses and provide recommendations to Congress and the administration to address the issue, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…
Thirty Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), blasted a draft resolution submitted by the Palestinians at the United Nations calling for Israel’s withdrawal from “Palestinian territories” and an arms embargo…
Mets owner Steve Cohen, who is the chairman and CEO of Point72 Asset Management, is taking a step back from investing while he focuses on the company’s strategic initiatives…
Oracle’sLarry Ellison became the second-richest person in the world, after the company’s shares closed up 5.1% on Monday…
David Rubenstein pledged $10 million to the National Zoo’s giant panda conservation program…
Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway announced his resignation from the university at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year; Holloway cited his family’s safety as one reason for his departure, months after protesters gathered outside his home during a faculty strike…
The Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit against the University of Maryland after administrators canceled a planned Gaza vigil hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine on the campus’ main quad on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks…
The Pakistani man arrested at the Canadian border and charged with plotting a terror attack on a New York City Jewish institution is contesting his extradition to the U.S….
Former Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had been the intended target of a Hezbollah bombing attack in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park last September, the Shin Bet and Israeli police released for publication today…
A new poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 57% of Gazans surveyed believe Hamas’ decision to launch the Oct. 7 terror attacks was a mistake; 39% of respondents said it was the correct move…
The New York Times interviews senior Hamas official Khaled Mashal, who is facing federal charges from the U.S. over his role in the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, in Qatar…
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian pledged to develop closer ties between Tehran and Moscow in an effort to reduce the impact of Western sanctions…
Ron Halber was named CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington…
Pic of the Day
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty (right) met today with Secretary of State Tony Blinken (second from left) and U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Herro Mustafa Garg (left) at Tahrir Palace in Cairo.
Birthdays
Author and CNN analyst, he was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, Bakari Sellers turns 40…
Marina Del Rey, Calif., resident, Kathy Levinson Wolf… Retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, he served as U.S. secretary of housing and urban development in the Trump administration, Dr. Ben Carson turns 73… Former co-CEO of SAP and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Léo Apotheker turns 71… Harvard professor of psychology, specializing in visual cognition and psycholinguistics, he is opposed to campus protest occupations, Steven Pinker turns 70… U.S. senator (R-AL), Tommy Tuberville turns 70… Former CEO of The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee, Howard Tevlowitz… Executive director of the Los Angeles Westside Jewish Community Center since 2004, Brian Greene… Attorney general of Israel, Gali Baharav-Miara turns 65… Winner of three Grammy Awards for music videos, he is also a filmmaker and photographer, Mark Lee Romanek turns 65… Professor of economics at MIT and a 2021 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, Joshua Angrist turns 64… One of the earliest Israeli tech entrepreneurs, he is best known for starting Aladdin Knowledge Systems in 1985, Yanki Margalit turns 62… Founder and executive chairman of Delek US, Ezra Uzi Yemin turns 56… Classical pianist, Simone Dinnerstein turns 52… NBC and MSNBC legal analyst, she was a 2021 candidate for Manhattan district attorney, Tali Farhadian Weinstein turns 49… Founding partner of Shore Capital Partners, he is a part-owner of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury along with his brother Mat Ishbia, Justin R. Ishbia turns 47… Comedian, actor, producer and screenwriter, Billy Eichner turns 46… Rome bureau chief of The New York Times, covering Italy and the Vatican, Jason Horowitz… Co-host of “Bloomberg Surveillance” every morning on Bloomberg Television and Bloomberg Radio, Lisa Abramowicz turns 45… Immediate past editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, Avi Mayer… Professional poker player whose total career live tournament winnings exceed $20.2 million, Nick Schulman turns 40… Baseball broadcaster for the Washington Nationals, Dan Kolko… Television and film actress, Shoshana Bush turns 36… Vice president of government relations at The Jewish Federations of North America, Karen Paikin Barall… Senior director at the Levinson Group, Zak Sawyer… Robin Anderson…
Recent Daily Kickoff Newsletters
