New York/Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a golden pager as a gift to US President Donald Trump, in an apparent reference to the clandestine operation in September last year targetting the Hezbollah militant group, media reports said on Friday.
After receiving the golden pager from Netanyahu during their meeting at the White House on Tuesday, Trump called it a “great operation.”
On September 17, 2024, thousands of explosions struck Hezbollah members, targeting their pagers and then walkie-talkies a day later, CNN said quoting the Lebanese health authorities, and added that the blasts killed at least 37 people, including some children, and injured nearly 3,000, many of them civilian bystanders.
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The Times of Israel quoted the Prime Minister’s Office as confirming on Thursday that the gift “symbolizes the Prime Minister’s decision that led to a turning point in the war and the starting point for breaking the will of the terrorist organisation Hezbollah.”
The operation “expresses the power, technological superiority and cunning of Israel against its enemies,” according to the PMO.
Describing the golden pager, the newspaper said it showed text that read ‘Press with both hands,’ and was embedded on a wooden trophy-style display with a placard message saying: “To President Donald J Trump, our greatest friend and greatest ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
“In return, Trump gave Netanyahu a signed photograph of the two of them. He signed the photograph, ‘To Bibi, A great leader!’, CNN said quoting a post on Instagram by Netanyahu’s son Yair.
The September 2024 attacks came as Israel began to step up a counter-offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which began striking Israel almost immediately after the allied Palestinian terror group Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, the Times of Israel said.
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
