Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a “warm conversation” with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Monday night, the premier’s office announced on Tuesday.
The meeting, which focused on “regional issues,” followed Netanyahu’s “successful meeting” with President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., the Prime Minister’s Office stated.
Trump credited Netanyahu on Monday for guiding the Jewish state to victory over a “force the likes of which very few countries could have handled.”
“He’s a wartime prime minister,” Trump said of Netanyahu, responding to a question from JNS during a press conference outside Mar-a-Lago. “He’s taken Israel through a very dangerous period of drama.”
“That’s a pretty big statement, but it’s true,” the president told JNS. “If you had the wrong prime minister, Israel right now would not exist.”
Netanyahu said earlier on Monday that he held a “great meeting” with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as the national security adviser, as part of his visit to Florida.
Tommy Pigott, principal deputy spokesman at the U.S. State Department, stated that the two met to “discuss regional security, economic cooperation and the fight against antisemitism.”
Vance claimed in a Dec. 21 interview that concerns about antisemitism are sometimes raised as a way to avoid discussing “a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy” regarding the Jewish state.
Vance condemned antisemitism in the interview with the conservative Unherd outlet, saying that “antisemitism, and all forms of ethnic hatred, have no place in the conservative movement. Whether you’re attacking somebody because they’re white or because they’re black or because they’re Jewish, I think it’s disgusting and we should call that stuff out.”
