Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gifted Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) with a silver-plated beeper on Wednesday in reference to Israel’s September 2024 detonation of thousands of pagers carried by Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.
Meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, Netanyahu explained the difference between the commemorative pager and the genuine article.
“The real beeper is like one-tenth the weight—it’s nothing,” the Israeli prime minister told the senator from Pennsylvania. “But it changes history.”
Wearing his signature hooded sweatshirt and shorts, Fetterman expressed his appreciation for what the Prime Minister’s Office called “Operation Pager.”
“When that story broke, I was like, ‘Oh, I love it,’” Fetterman said. “Thank you for this.”
Fetterman gave Netanyahu a framed article and photo from the 1986 opening of the Philadelphia monument to Netanyahu’s older brother, Yonatan.
Yonatan was killed in the 1976 Israeli raid on Entebbe, Uganda, that rescued 102 hostages taken by German and Palestinian terrorists in a plane hijacking. Both Yonatan and Benjamin Netanyahu spent part of their childhoods in the Philadelphia area.
Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Fetterman has distinguished himself as one of the staunchest supporters of the Jewish state among elected Democrats.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office stated that Netanyahu “thanked Sen. Fetterman and his wife, Gisele, for their consistent support of Israel since the outbreak of the war” during the “warm and friendly meeting.”
