US President Joe Biden officially nominated Tom Nides, a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, as the US ambassador to Israel, the White House announced on Tuesday.
A banker by profession, Nides, 60, served as the deputy secretary of state from 2011–2013 and is the current vice-chairman of the Morgan Stanley investment banking company.
Nides, who is Jewish, has a close relationship with Joe Leiberman since running his vice-presidential campaign in 2000.
He is expected to adhere closely to Biden’s policies regarding Israel. Former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren wrote in his book Ally that Nides fervently opposed the efforts of Congress to defund the UNWRS and the UNESCO in 2011.
In 2012, Nides wrote a letter to the US Senate’s Committee on Appropriations opposing legislation against the perpetual “Palestinian refugee” myth, which strived to differentiate between the Palestinians displaced by Israel’s creation in 1948 – and their descendants. The legislation would have decreased the number of “refugees” from 5 million to 30,000.
Nides stated in the letter that the proposed legislation “will generate a very strong negative reaction from the Palestinians and our allies in the region, particularly Jordan.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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An excerpt from his bio in Wikipedia:
In 1992, he married Virginia Carpenter Moseley in an ecumenical ceremony, and has attended church with her; it is unclear if he still practices Judaism.[4][27] Nides and Moseley are parents to two children: a son and a daughter. Moseley is CNN’s senior vice president of newsgathering for the network’s U.S. operation. Need I say more?
I believe we have a much more urgent need to fear the current government of Israel than to worry about a foreign ambassador.