Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Thursday morning!
Ed. note: This is the final Daily Kickoff of 2021. Thank you for being an avid reader over the past 12 months. We look forward to bringing you ever greater stories and content in 2022. Stay tuned!
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) planned trip to Israel over Christmas has been postponed amid Israel’s increased travel restrictions to combat the spread of the Omicron variant, a spokesperson told Jewish Insider.
Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) sent a bipartisan letter to Biden administration officials urging them to impose sanctions on Hamas and Hezbollah officials for their use of human shields in conflicts with Israel.
The Illinois Investment Policy Board voted 7-0 to divest its state pension funds from Unilever, following the announcement earlier this year by subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s that the ice cream company would cease sales in what it referred to as “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas and Arizona have already divested state funds from the U.K.-based conglomerate.
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan suggested yesterday that talks with Tehran over its nuclear program could be exhausted “within weeks,” during a Iran-focused visit to Jerusalem in which he met with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and his Israeli counterpart Eyal Hulata.
The meetings helped assuage Israeli concerns over policy differences between the U.S. and Israel on the Iranian threat, senior Israeli officials told reporters.
Gantz also updated Sullivan on confidence-building measures that the defense establishment is undertaking with the Palestinian Authority as well as counterterrorism and other security missions in the West Bank.
In his meeting with Sullivan, Gantz stressed that Israel wanted the U.S. to further invest in Israel’s technological edge, as well as its quantitive and qualitative military superiority, an Israeli official told Jewish Insider.
meet the candidate
Virginia’s Victoria Virasingh navigates the progressive lane

Victoria Virasingh
As she mounts her first bid for public office, Victoria Virasingh, a progressive House challenger in Northern Virginia, is borrowing from the grassroots playbook that has proven successful in recent Democratic primary upsets from the Bronx to St. Louis. The 29-year-old Arlington native, who is challenging Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), supports Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and she has renounced contributions from corporate political action committees. But Virasingh emphasizes that her campaign is informed, more than anything else, by her own background, as she explained in a recent interview with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel.
Background: Virasingh, who identifies as Indian and Latina, is the daughter of working-class immigrants from Ecuador and Thailand. She attended Stanford University on a full scholarship and was previously employed in the tech sector at Palantir, the Silicon Valley data firm, where her work on public-private partnerships took her to Germany and Israel, among other places. Virasingh launched her campaign this summer after returning home amid the pandemic.
Outside the box: “When I was sitting down and deciding our policies and what I believed in, it came from a lived experience and also a professional experience and responding to the needs of the constituents of my district,” Virasingh said last month in the finished basement of her parents’ Arlington townhouse, which doubles as her campaign headquarters. “Sometimes that’s going to neatly fit in a box, and sometimes it’s not.”
Navigating the Middle East: Her stance on Israel sets her apart from some of her progressive allies in the House. Virasingh supports continued U.S. security assistance to Israel. “Our relationship and our allyship with Israel is extremely vital,” she said. “I believe in strengthening that relationship.” Still, her hesitation with regard to supplemental funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system suggests that she may still be working her way through the issue. “I don’t want to be presumptive about how I would vote on the Iron Dome funding,” she said, “but I would hope to be more proactive on the policy prior to the vote itself.”
Ally: “She is a pragmatic progressive who does not fit neatly into an ideological box, and she rejects outright the antisemitic notion that Zionist Jews should be pushed out of the progressive movement,” Zioness’s Amanda Berman said of Virasingh. “Given her family’s own refugee story and her experiences growing up, she sees herself as an ally to Jews and other minorities who have had to fight for the American dream.”
Reason for running: “When I looked at the priorities of the voters and the priorities of the district and the leadership, I didn’t see those priorities being translated,” Virasingh told JI. “I didn’t see those issues being advocated for in the way that they needed to be. It started to trigger something in me. We can’t just wait. We can’t just say, ‘Oh, well, he’s nice, so therefore, we should just keep him,’ when, I think, we need to advocate for leaders who understand what it’s like and are willing to do something about it.”
Bonus — Texas Hold’em: J Street is endorsing progressive immigration lawyer Jessica Cisneros in her second challenge to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) in Texas’s 28th Congressional District. Cuellar was endorsed by Pro-Israel America in July.