We present the first observation of instability in weakly magnetized, pressure dominated plasma Couette flow firmly in the Hall regime. Strong Hall currents couple to a low frequency electromagnetic mode that is driven by high-$beta$ ($>1$) pressure profiles. Spectroscopic measurements show heating (factor of 3) of the cold, unmagnetized ions via a resonant Landau damping process. A linear theory of this instability is derived that predicts positive growth rates at finite $beta$ and shows the stabilizing effect of very large $beta$, in line with observations.