BURSTPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gifted Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) a “silver-plated beeper” during the lawmaker’s visit to the Jewish State, inspired by Israel’s covert operation when thousands of devices on Hezbollah fighters detonated last year.
“This is a silver-plated beeper. The real beeper is like one-tenth the weight,” Netanyahu said on Wednesday after handing the symbolic device to the senator. “It’s nothing, but it changes history.”
Fetterman, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel in its war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, then told Netanyahu that “when that story broke, I was like, ‘Oh I love it. I love it,’ and now it’s like, thank you for this.”
“Thank you,” the Pennsylvania Democrat added before shaking the prime minister’s hand.
The gift is a reference to Israel’s operation in September last year when it detonated booby-trapped pagers in an attack to take out Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, in Lebanon.
Netanyahu and his wife Sara met with Fetterman and his wife Gisele on Wednesday at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem. The trip was Fetterman’s second visit to Israel since becoming a senator.
During the “warm and friendly” meeting, Netanyahu and his wife thanked Fetterman and his wife for “their consistent support of Israel since the outbreak of the war,” the prime minister’s office said on Wednesday.
Netanyahu had a similar present for President Trump last month while visiting Washington. The prime minister gifted Trump a golden pager fixed onto a wooden panel in early February.
The pager is attached to a golden plaque and says “To President Donald J. Trump, Our greatest friend and greatest ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
The prime minister’s office also said in a statement that Fetterman gave Netanyahu a framed original news article from 1986 that features a photograph of the prime minister at a Philadelphia memorial for his late brother Yoni, an Israeli military officer who was killed in action during “Operation Entebbe” in Uganda in 1976.