Netanyahu Gives John Fetterman Silver-Plated Pager as Ghoulish Gift

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Sen. John Fetterman on Wednesday. And Bibi’s gift to the senator from Pennsylvania is likely to raise more than a few eyebrows. Fetterman was presented with a silver-plated pager, apparently in reference to the terror attack orchestrated by Israel that targeted thousands of Hezbollah members in Lebanon late last year using pagers rigged with explosives.

“This is a silver-plated beeper. The real beeper is like one-tenth the weight. But it changes history,” Netanyahu told Fetterman.

Fetterman’s response to Netanyahu while holding the ghoulish memento was one of tremendous thanks. “When that story broke, I was like, ‘Oh, I love it. I love it.’ And now it’s like, thank you for this,” Fetterman said.

Israel’s terror attack killed at least 42 people, including an 8-year-old and an 11-year-old, and injured about 3,250 more, including 200 critically.

Israel built the pagers themselves in a major operation, producing the devices through a manufacturer in Taiwan and selling them to Hezbollah without any indication they were behind the deal. The attack was denounced by experts at the UN as a violation of international law.

“These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time,” the group of experts said in a statement at the time. “Such attacks require prompt, independent investigation to establish the truth and enable accountability for the crime of murder.”

Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump two similar commemorative pagers back in February, one gold and another described as “normal.” Elon Musk, the billionaire oligarch currently destroying the U.S. federal government, appeared to be pictured near one of the pagers in the Oval Office shortly after it was given to Trump.

Defenders of Israel’s attacks tried to justify the tactic by suggesting that everyone who was killed or injured deserved it. But experts pointed out that such a large-scale attack against thousands of devices without knowing who was actually holding the devices was a terrible violation of international laws.

“To the extent that international humanitarian law applies, at the time of the attacks there was no way of knowing who possessed each device and who was nearby,” the UN experts said. “Simultaneous attacks by thousands of devices would inevitably violate humanitarian law, by failing to verify each target, and distinguish between protected civilians and those who could potentially be attacked for taking a direct part in hostilities.”

“Such attacks could constitute war crimes of murder, attacking civilians, and launching indiscriminate attacks, in addition to violating the right to life,” the experts concluded.