Thomas Nides, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, speaks during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Sept 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, on Capitol Hill, December 20, 2012 in Washington, DC.

Tom Nides, President Joe Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, sailed through his Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday, receiving praise from senators on both sides of the aisle, reports Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod. Nides, a former deputy secretary of state for management and resources, largely stuck to the administration’s positions on a range of issues; those included peace efforts between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Abraham Accords, Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital, support for Iron Dome resupply, reopening the Jerusalem consulate that serves the Palestinians, Iran policy, the Golan Heights and assistance to Palestinians.

‘North Star’: Nides said that his “North Star is a democratic Jewish state” and argued that the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreement between Israel and several Arab nations, make it “stronger,” and benefit both the U.S. and the Palestinians. “I don’t think any one of us believes that is achievable in the next couple weeks,” Nides said of a two-state solution. “I do believe that we need as a government to continue to create the pathway to achieve that by emphasizing the importance of a two-state solution, providing aid to the Palestinians and dissuading both sides from provocative unilateral actions.”

Eye on Jerusalem: He defended the administration’s push to reopen the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, which traditionally served as a liaison with the Palestinians and was shuttered by former President Donald Trump in 2019. The move is opposed both by Republicans and the Israeli government. “This consulate has existed… for almost 130 years. The opening of the consulate, if it occurs… it will have no impact on the capital of Israel being Jerusalem,” Nides added. “I fundamentally believe that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.”

High praise: Nides’s testimony earned him praise from committee members across the political spectrum. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) told JI that Nides “did a good job.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said he “appreciated [Nides’s] strong defense of the United States as a broker for peace” and his support for reopening the Jerusalem consulate. Even Republican committee members who have clashed frequently with the administration on Israel and Middle East policy offered praise for Nides. “He’s impressive… I think he’s a good choice,” Committee Ranking Member Jim Risch (R-ID) said, adding that he plans to vote for Nides. “He’s fully on board with a policy that completely supports the Israelis, so I’m there.”

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) attends the 2021 Met Gala Celebrating In America: A Lexicon Of Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum Of Art on September 13, 2021 in New York City.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) set off a days-long firestorm of media commentary last week when she arrived at the Met Gala in Manhattan wearing a white Brother Vellies dress emblazoned in bold red letters with the not-so-subtle phrase “Tax the Rich.” The two-term New York City congresswoman, a Democratic socialist who casts herself as a champion of the working class, was widely criticized as out of touch. Even some progressives renounced the gesture as superficial. For some Jewish leaders and commentators, the congresswoman’s high-profile appearance underscored how some far-left lawmakers are increasingly accepted in mainstream culture — in contrast to right-wing provocateurs in the House who are largely shunned from such events and tend to operate in their own isolated silos on the margins, reports Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel.

Culturally fashionable: Viewed at a broader angle, the controversy was a confirmation that Ocasio-Cortez, 31, has achieved a level of celebrity such that even an anodyne slogan written across the back of a designer gown was capable of driving the news cycle for multiple days. “The Squad is culturally fashionable, and AOC just proved it by getting an invite and rocking a controversial dress at the Met Gala,” said Thane Rosenbaum, an author and distinguished university professor at Touro College, referring to the growing coalition of powerful House Democrats including Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Ocasio-Cortez, who is known colloquially as AOC. “Conservative Republicans wouldn’t receive an invite to a Greek diner on Madison Avenue.”

Concern: Jewish leaders expressed concern that Ocasio-Cortez and her allies in the House are leveraging their outsized cultural influence to smuggle in views that until recently were taboo within the Democratic Party, including, among other things, calls to withhold American aid to Israel. “For me, what’s particularly concerning about that is that this is a moment of tremendous hope right now,” said Barry Shrage, a professor in the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program at Brandeis University, alluding to the new unity government in Israel. “This is the time when people, at least on the center-left, ought to be able to say, ‘Hey, it’s really time to give Israel a chance to make steps toward peace.’” He wasn’t getting his hopes up. “This is something that the Squad is going to fight against with all their might,” said Shrage, the former president of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston.

Opposite end: Far-right upstarts such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) have, of course, also been accused of antisemitism. “Sure there are some alt-right extremists who hate Jews, but where are they, how many are they, and what possible influence could they have, as compared with progressives on college campuses and in media (mainstream and social), who have cultural cache, social influence and serious numbers behind them,” Rosenbaum said in an email to JI. “And they have high-profile platforms from which to speak: lecture halls, favorable press, and throngs of Twitter and Instagram followers.” For Rosenbaum, it comes down to, as he put it, “much smaller numbers, negligible social capital and cultural irrelevance that distinguishes progressives from extremist Republicans.”

Intra-party feud: The Iron Dome showdown was just the latest escalation in an ongoing intra-party feud over Israel that has grown increasingly contentious in the months following the May conflict between Israel and Hamas. Last week, Ocasio-Cortez introduced an amendment that would block a $735 million arms sale to Israel, following a previous failed effort to submit a resolution condemning the sale. Moreover, a number of progressive House candidates,who are running for office this cycle, have called for conditioning aid to the Jewish state. Beyond foreign policy, some progressives have been accused of using antisemitic language while addressing Israel or social issues more broadly. This has caused alarm among Jewish leaders who fret that such rhetoric may become normalized on the left because it emanates from high-profile lawmakers in the House.

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Elsewhere: Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI), joined by 18 cosponsors, is set to announce a bill today blocking Israel from using U.S. defense articles and services to annex Palestinian territority or violate human rights. The legislation also supports reopening the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem and the Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission in Washington. It also requires labeling all West Bank and Gaza exports as such, rather than as products of Israel, as mandated by the Trump administration. The bill is supported by J Street.

United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the country’s second-largest teachers union, will consider a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel at its September meeting tonight, the third time in two weeks that an anti-Israel resolution is being considered in a large city, following failed attempts in the city councils of Seattle and Burlington, Vt. After a months-long advocacy campaign, members of the Los Angeles Jewish community are “cautiously optimistic” about the outcome of tonight’s vote, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

In the classroom: UTLA represents some 32,000 public school employees who teach more than 600,000 students. While the resolution does not explicitly call for any curriculum changes in how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is taught in schools, its passage, opponents say, could still have implications for students. “This proposed anti-Israel motion would alienate and create an unwelcome environment — if not worse — for Israeli Americans and many other Jewish Americans,” said Dan Gold, vice president of community engagement at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

Up for debate: The first positive sign for the resolution’s opponents came in late July, when UTLA’s Board of Directors — another leadership body in the union’s byzantine bureaucratic structure, akin to the Cabinet of the executive branch — recommended indefinitely postponing a vote on the BDS resolution. The board’s substitute motion is expected to be introduced Thursday night, and if it passes, then the BDS resolution will not come to a vote.

Coming prepared: The coalition of pro-Israel Jewish organizations that worked together to fight this resolution had two years of experience on another controversial public education issue: the heated statewide debate around California’s model ethnic studies curriculum, early drafts of which did not teach about antisemitism and included praise of the BDS movement. The coalition claimed victory when the final draft of the curriculum — approved by the state’s board of education earlier this year — included lesson plans on antisemitism and diversity in the American Jewish community.

Minority rule: A small number of Jewish UTLA members have already left the organization in protest, with more threatening to do so if the resolution passes. But Gregg Solkovits, the president of Democrats for Israel’s Los Angeles chapter and a longtime member of UTLA, cautions that a wave of pro-Israel teachers leaving the union could have unintended consequences. Instead, he urges them to get involved in union elections, which usually have just a small minority of teachers voting. “If I really felt that the vast majority of members wanted us to be pro-BDS, I’d be sad, but I could roll with it,” Solkovits added. “But I think this is a minority position brought forward by people who thought to take advantage of people’s apathy at the end of the school year.”

Read more here.

Bonus: The Los Angeles Times editorial board called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto legislation requiring ethnic studies be taught in California schools over concerns that the law allows “too much leeway for unapproved curriculum to be taught.” The editorial board points out that some California school districts are already teaching a controversial curriculum not approved by the state board of education that promotes the BDS movement and “seemed written to inculcate certain biases and left almost no room for students to think for themselves.”