| | 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. Spread the word! Invite your friends to sign up.👇 Share with a friend | - 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.
| 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 Times reports, 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  ITAI RON/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images 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.
Read the full story here.
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  JIM WATSON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES 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.”
Read the full story here. chaotic conversation Senate hearing on antisemitism thrown into chaos as anti-Israel agitators shout obscenities  BEN CURTIS/AP PHOTO 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.
Read the full story here.
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  DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES 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.
Read the full story here. scoop Vance downplayed Muslim Brotherhood in newly uncovered blog post  JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES 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.
Read the full story here. food for thought Former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman laments post-Oct. 7 damage to Israeli farming  courtesy 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.”
Read the full story here. | 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] | Be featured: Email us to inform the JI readership of your upcoming event, job opening, or other communication. | 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”...
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