Even as the massacre at Charlie Hebdo led to enthusiastic expressions of European support for free speech, there has been little discussion of Europe’s draconian (by American standards) limitations on “hate speech” in general and Holocaust denial in particular. And yet, according to Sam Schulman, not only has the effort to prevent “journalists, essayists, and fiction writers from questioning Islam and immigration policy” done nothing to deter or deflect jihadist fury, but proscribing Holocaust denial has failed to curb anti-Semitism, including the murderous kind.

On the latter front, writes Schulman, the evidence is clear. “Twenty years of policing speech about the Holocaust have produced a perverse result”:

In the two countries [the U.S. and UK] in which Holocaust denial is freely available to anyone, the level of Holocaust denial and what might be termed Holocaust skepticism has changed very little. But despite the vigilance and police powers of the regulated-speech countries [France and Germany], the percentage of Holocaust deniers plus skeptics increased substantially, from 5 percent to 26 percent in France and from 8 percent to 11 percent in Germany.

From his inspection of the data, Schulman concludes that “limiting free speech, for noble or ignoble reasons, is an experiment that has been tried and failed.”

Last Tuesday, the Houthis—the faction now ruling much of Yemen—said that they intend to renew attacks on international shipping through the Red and Arabian Seas. They had for the most part paused their attacks following the January 19 Israel-Hamas cease-fire, but their presence has continued to scare away maritime traffic near the Yemeni coast, with terrible consequences for the global economy.

The U.S. responded on Saturday by initiating strikes on Houthi missile depots, command-and-control centers, and propaganda outlets, and has promised that the attacks will continue for days, if not weeks. The Houthis responded by launching drones, and possibly missiles, at American naval ships, apparently without result. Another missile fired from Yemen struck the Sinai, but was likely aimed at Israel. As Ari Heistein has written in Mosaic, it may take a sustained and concerted effort to stop the Houthis, who have high tolerance for casualties—but this is a start. Ron Ben-Yishai provides some context:

The goal is to punish the Houthis for directly targeting Western naval vessels in the Red Sea while also exerting indirect pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. . . . While the Biden administration did conduct airstrikes against the Houthis, it refrained from a proactive military campaign, fearing a wider regional war. However, following the collapse of Iran’s axis—including Hizballah’s heavy losses in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria—the Trump administration appears unafraid of such an escalation.

Iran, the thinking goes, will also get the message that the U.S. isn’t afraid to use force, or risk the consequences of retaliation—and will keep this in mind as it considers negotiations over its nuclear program. Tamir Hayman adds:

The Houthis are the last proxy of the Shiite axis that have neither reassessed their actions nor restrained their weapons. Throughout the campaign against the Yemenite terrorist organization, the U.S.-led coalition has made operational mistakes: Houthi regime infrastructure was not targeted; the organization’s leaders were not eliminated; no sustained operational continuity was maintained—only actions to remove immediate threats; no ground operations took place, not even special-forces missions; and Iran has not paid a price for its proxy’s actions.

But if this does not stop the Houthis, it will project weakness—not just toward Hamas but primarily toward Iran—and Trump’s power diplomacy will be seen as hollow. The true test is one of output, not input. The only question that matters is not how many strikes the U.S. carries out, but whether the Red Sea reopens to all vessels. We will wait and see—for now, things look brighter than they did before.