Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gifts a silver-plated beeper to Sen. John Fetterman on March 19, 2025. (Screenshot)
(JTA) — When Sen. John Fetterman said he loved the Israeli operation that sent exploding pagers to members of Hezbollah, he probably never expected that Israel would give him a beeper, too.
But that’s what happened this week, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Fetterman, an outspokenly pro-Israeli Democratic lawmaker, to his office in Jerusalem.
The beeper handover took place during an exchange of gifts. The Pennsylvania senator gave Netanyahu a framed news article about an effort to memorialize Netanyahu’s brother, the fallen Israeli soldier Yoni Netanyahu, in Philadelphia — where Netanyahu lived as a teenager.
Netanyahu’s gift was smaller — and didn’t explode.
“What can I give a man who has everything? How about giving him a beeper?” Netanyahu said, handing over a small silver box to Fetterman. “This is a silver-plated beeper. The real beeper is, like, one-tenth the weight. It’s nothing, but it changes history.”
Fetterman responded, “When that story broke, I was like, ‘Oh, I love it, I love it.’ And now, it’s like, thank you for this.”
Pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon in September, wounding and killing many, in addition to a number of civilians, in a long-planned Israeli operation. The operation came 10 before Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, in an airstrike and two weeks ahead of an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. That conflict ended in a ceasefire in late November.
Fetterman has praised the beeper operation before, including in comments to a representative of the militant right-wing pro-Israel group Betar US.
And Netanyahu has gifted a pager to a U.S. official before. In a visit to the White House last month, he gave one to President Donald Trump. That one was plated with gold.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news the rest of 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Membership Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
