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The prime minister called the president “the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House” in their joint press conference.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented President Trump with gifts of a golden pager and a regular one during their meeting Tuesday, as tokens of one of Israel’s most spectacular anti-terror successes last year.
The president understood immediately, saying, “That was a great operation.”
The Mossad had booby-trapped thousands of pagers that it managed to sell to Hezbollah through a third party, and when they were simultaneously detonated in September, about 30 Hezbollah operatives were killed and 3,000 were wounded.
According to Mossad agents speaking to the American news show 60 Minutes two months later, “It was the tipping point of the war” against the Lebanese terror group, which soon agreed to a ceasefire with Israel.
For his part, Trump gave Netanyahu a picture of the two of them and, referring to the prime minister by his nickname, he wrote a dedication across its top, “To Bibi, a great leader.”
Netanyahu praised Trump fulsomely in their post-meeting, joint press conference, in which the president proposed that the U.S. take over Gaza in order to rebuild it and move the entire Palestinian population there to other countries for their own safety and to enable them to build better lives for themselves.
Netanyahu first repeated Israel’s goals in Gaza, “Destroy Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, secure the release of all our hostages and ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.”
He then said to Trump, “Your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas will help us to achieve these goals. And I’ve seen you do this many times. You cut to the chase, see things others refuse to see, say things others refuse to say, and after the jaws drop people scratch their heads and say, ‘You know, he’s right.’”
“This is the kind of thinking that enabled us to bring the Abraham Accords, enable us to shape the Middle East and bring peace,” he added.
He also thanked Trump for inviting him to be the first foreign leader to visit the White House in his second term, saying, “This is a testament to your friendship and support for the Jewish state and the Jewish people.”
“I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: You are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” he continued.
He ticked off a list of things Trump has already done for the Jewish state, including pressure that the president applied before entering office, which Netanyahu called “leadership to help bring our hostages home, among them American citizens.”
Referring to executive orders Trump has since signed, he said, “You freed up munitions that have been withheld from Israel in the midst of a seven-front war for our existence. You ended unjust sanctions against law-abiding Israeli citizens, you boldly confronted the scourge of antisemitism, you stopped funding international organizations like UNRWA that support and fund terrorists, and today you renewed the maximum pressure campaign against Iran.”
The latter was a reference to a directive to the U.S. Treasury to enforce sanctions in order to “drive Iran’s oil exports to zero,” which would cripple the Islamic Republic’s economy that is almost completely dependent on its oil sales.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Netanyahu said, “all this in just two weeks, can we imagine where we’ll be in four years? I can, I know you can, Mr. President.”
English (US) ·