At a glance, it is an influencer video like so many others. A handsome boy with brown curls looks sultrily into the camera while filming himself on a boat. The wind plays through his locks as he turns his head to show off his jawline. But the nineteen-year-old boy in the video is Yemeni Rashid Al-Haddad and the boat is heading for the Galaxy Leader, the cargo ship that the Houthis hijacked in the Red Sea on November 19. Since the outbreak of the Gaza war, Yemeni militants have carried out dozens of attacks on passing ships.
Last week, Al-Haddad became an internet sensation after someone shared his video on X, where it has now been viewed more than 20 million times. “God, you are so handsome,” people responded to the video and: “He can hijack my ship.” Al-Haddad was soon renamed ‘Tim-Houthi Chalamet’, due to his resemblance to the popular American-French actor Timothée Chalamet.
Al-Haddad was invited by Turkish-American Hasan Piker, a well-known creator on the streaming platform Twitch, who is known for his left-wing political views. The interview – which was watched live by more than twenty-five thousand people – discussed support for Palestinians, criticism of Israel and the United States’ attacks on Yemen. But it was also about school, what Al-Haddad does in daily life and music. And of course about Chalamet, but, Al-Haddad admitted with a laugh: he had no idea who that is.
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Instagram posted, shows al-Haddad on the hijacked Galaxy Leader, with the Arabic caption: “The ship is ours now, look for it no more.”
PR war
The attention to Al-Haddad exposes how social media plays a role in the conflict on the Red Sea. The Houthis already published a slick one in November video of the hijacking of the Galaxy Leader, in which a helicopter with the Yemeni and Palestinian flags landed on the deck.
The hijacked Galaxy Leader is according to rumors can even be visited in the meantime. One of Rashid Al-Haddad’s videos also shows several people standing on the deck of the cargo ship and taking selfies. The ship, partly owned by an Israeli businessman, was the Houthis’ first and so far only successful hijacking, but has become a symbol of resistance to Israel in parts of the Arab world.
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The other side of the Red Sea conflict also makes eager use of social media. For example, the captain of the USS Dwight Eisenhower, the ship shelling Yemen, also known as “Mighty Ike,” posted a series of photos of his crew posed with cookies. The captions are largely about the parents of crew members who miss them.
‘Thirst trap’
The Houthis aren’t the only ones either sex appeal as part of their PR. The Israeli army has been using images of beautiful young female soldiers in uniform for decades. In 2007, the American men’s magazine published Maxim for example, a controversial article about women in the Israeli army. “They are breathtakingly beautiful and can take apart an Uzi in seconds,” read the intro to the piece, “Are the women of the Israeli army the sexiest soldiers in the world?” The article was produced at the initiative of the Israeli consulate in New York.
Since 2007, social media has played the role of so-called thirst traps largely adopted. There are several accounts on Instagram and TikTok where photos of the most beautiful Israeli soldiers are bundled and the official TikTok account of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces, the Israeli army) has also been sharing for years videos of attractive soldiers in uniform in a way that sexualizes and glorifies war. “There is a long history of military iconography in Israel that promotes beauty in uniform as a nationalist symbol,” anthropologist Rebecca Stein said in 2021. Rolling Stone: “the military is using this symbol in new ways that meet the needs of a digital age.”
Only he will know whether nineteen-year-old Al-Haddad also had military iconography in mind when he posted his first video on Tiktok. But his photogenic gaze has ensured that Generation Z is suddenly showing a remarkable interest in the geopolitical conflict on the Red Sea.