US President-elect Donald Trump dined Sunday night with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife Sara at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Florida.
A photo of the pair was posted on X by Trump’s deputy director of communications.
Netanyahu is in Miami for several weeks to visit her son Yair who has been living in Florida for over year. Her trip will apparently keep her out of the country during the beginning of the prime minister’s scheduled testimony in his criminal trial on corruption charges.
Sara Netanyahu said that during her meeting with Trump, she raised the issue of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip who were abducted from Israel on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led a massive cross-border attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251.
“During the meeting, which was warm and friendly, we discussed many topics, including the steadfast friendship between Israel and the United States and the importance of continuing to nurture the unique bond between our nations,” she wrote in an Instagram post in English and in Hebrew.
“I also brought to the President’s attention the immense suffering Israel endured on October 7th and the inhumanity of Hamas terrorists holding our citizens hostage under harsh conditions. I emphasized the urgent need to act for their release and swift return,” she said.
“We also discussed the strategic importance of Israel’s victory in the fight against the axis of evil, for a more stable and secure future in the Middle East and around the world,” Netanyahu wrote, adding that she congratulated Trump on his election victory.
Trump has built a rapport with Netanyahu’s wife, offer her praise when in front of the prime minister.
When the Netanyahus last met Trump in July, the then-presidential candidate said that Sara was his “secret weapon” in maintaining a good relationship with her husband, though the two leaders’ association has gone through rocky times.
“As long as I have Sara, that’s all that matters,” Trump quipped at the time.
The incoming US president has previously faulted Netanyahu for failing to avert Hamas’s shock assault on southern Israel.
The prime minister’s relationship with Trump soured when Netanyahu congratulated US President Joe Biden for winning the 2020 election, which Trump falsely denies losing.
Trump wrote Netanyahu off, telling Israeli reporter Barak Ravid “F**k him” in an interview months later.
Sara Netanyahu has at times run afoul of the families of hostages. In September, she reportedly irked some families during a meeting with them by slamming the “shocking demonstrations” against her husband’s government and claiming that he was “doing everything he can” for the return of their loved ones, Channel 12 reported at the time.
The same month, leaked recordings from a meeting with hostage families published by Channel 12 had her telling the relative of a hostage abducted from a music festival near Gaza on October 7 that the government had been unaware of the Nova event and was therefore not responsible for the massacre that took place there.