Netanyahu, to honor Lindsey Graham, finish his mission!

Senator Lindsey Graham owed me nothing when we first met, in October 2023, as part of a delegation meeting with the families of American hostages. Yet he immediately built a compassionate relationship with me, and made a promise he always kept: to tell me the truth about the state of the negotiations, even when I would not like what he had to say. 

He gave me his only State of the Union invitation in 2024, while my son was held captive by Hamas in Gaza. He was heartbroken to learn that my son was the youngest US citizen taken and killed by Hamas — one of the 46 Americans murdered on October 7 — and he never stopped insisting that anyone who kills Americans has grave consequences waiting for him. He felt deeply for the hostage families, and for mine specifically.

Next week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travels to Washington to pay his respects to Senator Graham, who died suddenly this month. He will meet President Trump at the White House and mourn a man he rightly called one of Israel’s greatest friends. The eulogies will be heartfelt and deserved. But Graham’s friendship with Israel was never sentimental — it was strategic. He believed Israel’s long-term security would be won not by military dominance alone but by integration into its region, and that peace with Saudi Arabia would be the game changer that transforms the Middle East for a generation. Expanding the circle of peace that began with the Abraham Accords was the unfinished project of his final years.

That is why the eulogy that matters most this week will not be delivered from a podium. It will be delivered in policy. Netanyahu can honor Graham’s memory with words, or honor his mission with action — and everyone in the room will know the difference.

The moment could hardly be more consequential. President Trump ended the war with Iran on American terms and holds political capital in the region that no US president has held in decades. Saudi Arabia has stated what it needs to move toward normalization: a credible commitment against West Bank annexation and a political horizon its leadership can defend at home. The pieces of the agreement Graham worked toward are, remarkably, all on the table. What is missing is Israel’s part.

Here is where the coming Israeli election changes the equation. Netanyahu is campaigning, as he always does, on his special relationship with President Trump. Fair enough — but a relationship that serves as a campaign asset must also deliver on its obligations. President Trump should make one simple, public request of the Prime Minister next week: tell us your plan. If you win, what will your first 100 days look like? What specifically will your government do to advance normalization with Saudi Arabia, expand the Abraham Accords, and realize the vision Graham devoted his life to? Say it publicly — to the American people, to Israeli voters, and to the region.

This is the minimum test of seriousness. A leader who intends to make peace can describe how. Too many times, Oval Office meetings have been converted into campaign posters in Israel while the commitments meant to accompany them quietly evaporated. There should be no free meeting this time. The photograph with the president is a strategic asset of the United States, and it should be priced accordingly: in public commitments that advance the president’s regional vision, not just the prime minister’s electoral one.

The United States has done its part, and then some — it confronted Iran directly, gave Israel political cover no other nation could provide, and assembled Arab partners ready to build a new regional architecture that anchors Saudi Arabia in the American camp and shuts the door on China and Russia. Mutuality is the word this relationship needs now. Israel, which stands to gain more than any other nation from this new Middle East, cannot be the last holdout on delivering it.

History rarely offers the same window twice. This alignment — a president with unique leverage, a Saudi leadership open to a deal, an Iran weakened and contained — will not survive being taken for granted. It can be squandered by short-term politics, coalition arithmetic, and one more request for one more favor while giving nothing in return.

Lindsey Graham understood what was at stake, and he never stopped saying so. The most fitting memorial to him will not be carved in marble. It will be a signing ceremony — Israel and Saudi Arabia, brought together by an American president, completing the work a senator from South Carolina championed until his final day. Prime Minister Netanyahu can begin building that memorial next week. All he has to do is tell us how.

Rest in peace, Senator Graham. I will do whatever I can to make your vision a reality.