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Iran, Abraham Accords and Bibi’s trial: What Trump said in his historic Knesset speech
(JTA) — As the last of the Israeli hostages were released from Gaza, President Donald Trump addressed the country’s parliament — and was given a hero’s welcome.
Trump’s speech to the Knesset on Monday offered effusive praise for the state of Israel, warm — but not unguarded — praise for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and an outline for a vision of a future in which Israel is a full partner of every other nation in the region. And in typical Trump fashion, it was delivered with a mixture of bravado and unpredictable asides, some of which cut at the heart of several tensions in the Middle East.
Here are the big takeaways from Trump’s speech to the Knesset.
‘You’ve won’
With the hostages released, Trump made clear that, in his view, the era of Israeli military action in Gaza is over.
“Israel, with our help, has won all that they can by force of arms,” he said. “You’ve won. I mean, you’ve won. Now it’s time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East.”
Speaking of the hostages later, the president reflected on meeting with their families and the spirit he saw igniting them.
“Over the past two years, I’ve met many of the families of the Israelis taken hostage and those that were taken hostage, unbelievable. I’ve looked into their eyes. I’ve seen the worst nightmares of their suffering, but I’ve also seen something else, the beautiful love of the people,” he said. “It’s that love that’s defeated the enemies of civilization, built this incredible country and this unbelievable economy and forged one of the great democracies of the world.”
‘You could be a little bit nicer, Bibi’
Amid reports that Trump had been frustrated by Netanyahu’s pace in negotiations to end the war in Gaza, the president had broadcast total alignment with Jerusalem. He had Netanyahu by his side at the White House last week when he announced that Israel had agreed to a ceasefire proposal that would be presented to Hamas, which later signed on. He invited Netanyahu into his motorcade on his way from Ben Gurion airport to the parliament building on Monday.
And he began his speech by praising Netanyahu — but not as effusively as he might have.
“I want to express my gratitude to a man of exceptional courage and patriotism whose partnership did so much to make this momentous day possible. You know what I’m talking about. There’s only one prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,” Trump said. “He is not easy. I want to tell you he’s not the easiest guy to deal with, but that’s what makes him great.”
Later, as he praised opposition leader Yair Lapid as a “very nice guy,” Trump reacted to the reaction he perceived in Netanyahu and offered a rebuke.
“Now you can be a little bit nicer, Bibi, because you’re not at war anymore, Bibi, you did it.”
Bibi’s trial
Even while alluding to his frustrations with Netanyahu, Trump still took a moment to stump for him in the prime minister’s still-ongoing trial for political corruption. Turning to Israeli President Isaac Herzog at one point, Trump made a highly unusual show of intervening in the case, calling on him to use his pardon powers to settle the matter.
“Hey, I have an idea. Mr. President, why don’t you give him a pardon?” Trump said, to hoots and applause. “Give him the pardon. Come on.”
As chants of “Bibi!” could be heard, Trump continued, “It’s not in the speech, as you probably know, but I happen to like this gentleman right over here. And it just seems to make so much sense. You know, whether we like it or not, this has been one of the greatest wartime presidents.”
Trump then made specific reference to some of the bribery charges against Netanyahu, one of the cases that a large movement of Israeli protesters — including many hostage families — had cited as a reason why the prime minister should cede power.
“And cigars and champagne, who the hell cares about that?”
The U.S.-Israel relationship
As the war dragged on, segments of both the left and right in American politics have begun to question U.S. support for Israel. Trump vocally reaffirmed the bond.
“Israel will always remain a vital ally of the United States of America,” he said. “Israelis share our values, field one of the world’s most powerful militaries. You really do.” He added, “I’m proud to be the best friend that Israel has ever had.”
He also referenced the U.S. citizens who were abducted in Gaza in what he noted was “the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust,” painting American and Israeli grief over Oct. 7 as one and the same.
“The United States of America grieved alongside you, and we mourn for our own citizens who were so viciously taken that day,” he said. “And to all the families whose lives were forever changed by the atrocities of that day, and all of the people of Israel, please know that America joins you in those two everlasting vows: Never forget, and never again.”
What’s next for the ‘Avraham Accords’
At various points during his speech, Trump turned to his first administration’s signature foreign-policy accomplishment: the normalization agreements between Israel and a handful of Arab states, known as the Abraham Accords. On Monday he pronounced it the Hebrew way, “Avraham.”
“I like calling it the Avraham Accords. Avraham. It’s so cool. It’s so much nicer, you know? The Abraham versus the Avraham,” he said.
In the wake of what he said would be a concentrated rebuilding effort in Gaza, Trump also urged Israel and several Arab and Muslim nations to add to these accords. “Now we’re going to forge a future that is worthy of our heritage. We’re going to build a legacy that all the people of this region can be proud of,” he said.
“So instead of building fortresses to keep enemies at bay, the nations of this region should be building infrastructure to weave your commerce closer together, because you’ve got to compete with a big world out there in commerce. Now it’s a different kind of competition. Instead of making weapons and missiles, the wealth of this region should flow to schools and medicine, industry. And frankly, the new hot thing, artificial intelligence.”
Toward the end of his speech, Trump provided a list of countries and their capitals he said he would like to see forge stronger relations with Israel and each other. Some of them already have diplomatic ties to the country.
“New bonds of friendship, cooperation and commerce will join Tel Aviv to Dubai, Haifa to Beirut, Jerusalem to Damascus, and from Israel to Egypt, from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, from India to Pakistan, from Indonesia to Iraq, from Syria to Bahrain, Turkey to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates to Oman and Armenia to Azerbaijan,” he said.
How such an ambitious realignment would play on the larger diplomatic stage, as many countries remain furious at Israel for its handling of the Gaza war, remains to be seen. The president of Indonesia, one Muslim-majority nation long in discussions to join the accords, scuttled a planned historic visit to Israel Monday over reported concerns of pushback at home, though he attended the day’s summit between Israel and Hamas held in Egypt.
‘Make a deal’ with Iran
Amid talks of normalization, Trump paid special attention to the elephant in the room by urging the Knesset to use their momentum to “make a deal” with Iran, which both the United States and Israel had bombed at various times during the Israel-Gaza war.
“And even to Iran, whose regime has inflicted so much death on the Middle East, the hand of friendship and cooperation is open,” he said. I’m telling you, they want to make a deal.”
“Neither the United States nor Israel bear the people of Iran any hostility,” Trump continued. “We merely want to live in peace. We don’t want any looming threats over our heads.”
The moment stood out, as both the United States and Israel have had fraught relationships with Iran for nearly half a century. Netanyahu spoke to Congress in an effort to unravel a nuclear deal with Iran during the Obama administration; that deal wound up going through, only to be scuttled by Trump in his first term in office. Trump himself acknowledged this with some dark humor.
“As president I terminated the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, and ultimately I terminated Iran’s nuclear program with things called B-2 bombers,” he said. Yet, Trump pressed on, now a new deal should be reached, one predicated on Israel’s strengths.
He added, “A lot of Iranians in the United States are good people, smart, hardworking people. They don’t want to see what’s happened to their country. The story of fierce Israeli resolve and triumph since Oct. 7 should be proof to the entire world that those who seek to destroy this nation are doomed to bitter failure. The State of Israel is strong and it will live and thrive forever.”
Bibi’s demand for weapons
Trump was open about one aspect of U.S. support for Israel that had received particular scrutiny and protest during the war: the transfer of weapons for Israel to use in Gaza.
“We make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve got a lot of them, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, frankly,” he said. Deeming himself “all about stopping wars,” Trump said he “hated” some of the weapons the United States makes “because the level of power is so enormous, so dangerous, so bad.”
Yet, Trump said, the United States gave Israel all the weapons it needed. He even ribbed Netanyahu’s desire for military supplies.
“I mean, Bibi would call me so many times: ‘Can you get me this weapon, that weapon, that weapon?’ Some of them I never heard of, Bibi. And I made them,” Trump said. “But you used them well. It also takes people that know how to use them, and you obviously use them very well, but so many that Israel became strong and powerful, which ultimately led to peace. That’s what led to peace.”
Miriam Adelson
Trump gave a special shout-out to one of his wealthiest and most stalwart pro-Israel donors in the United States, Miriam Adelson — widow to casino magnate Sheldon. While praising her, he also suggested she “loves” Israel more than the United States — flirting with the kind of “dual loyalty” trope that mainstream Jewish organizations have tended to condemn in the past.
The Adelsons, he said with an unusual degree of candor for a president referencing a top financial backer, had been a large influence on his Israel policy.
“I kept my promise and officially recognized the capital of Israel and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem,” Trump said, to applause. “Isn’t that right, Miriam?” He then urged Adelson to “stand up” for recognition.
During his first term, Trump told the Knesset, “Miriam and Sheldon, they would come into the office… I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else. Look at her sitting there so innocently. She’s got $60 billion in the bank… But she loves Israel. And they would come in, and her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved them.”
Trump described his relationship with the Adelsons as one where they would needle him to drop by the White House. “He’d call up, ‘Can I come over and see you?’ I’d say, ‘Sheldon, I’m the president of the United States. It doesn’t work that way.’ He’d come in,” the president said. “But they were very responsible for so much.”
“I’m going to get in trouble for this,” Trump said. “But I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So, Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more? The United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means, that might mean Israel.”
The word on Gaza, and ‘the Board of Peace’
When Trump’s remarks touched on what should come next for Gaza, he painted his vision as one of international cooperation and prosperity, should the Palestinians want it.
Says several “very wealthy” Arab and Muslim nations have committed “to support a safe gilding of Gaza and beyond,” Trump added, “The total focus of Gazans must be on restoring the fundamentals of stability, safety, dignity and economic development so they can finally have the better life that their children really do deserve after all these decades of horror. I intend to be a partner in this effort.”
The “day after” plan for Gaza was one of the major sticking points of the negotiations between Israel and Hamas, the latter of which has not committed to relinquishing control of the territory despite Trump and Israel’s demands. Some members of Israel’s far-right governing coalition, meanwhile, have urged for the expulsion of all Palestinians and for Israel to control or resettle the strip.
In the past, Trump has promoted the idea of the United States, or his personal business interests, taking Gaza for itself and turning it into a resort. His tone was more measured in the Knesset, saying his plan for rebuilding Gaza involved a “board of peace” that would be “unbelievably popular.”
“Is that a beautiful name? Like a board, of peace,” he said. “The only bad thing, from my standpoint: every single nation involved has asked me to be the chair. And I’ll tell you, I’m very busy. I didn’t count on that.”
Trump framed Gaza’s future as one up to Palestinians.
“The choice for Palestinians could not be more clear,” he said. “This is their chance to turn forever from the path of terror and violence, it’s been extreme, to exile the wicked forces of hate that are in their midst. And I think that’s going to happen.”
Jared and Ivanka
How much does Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, love Israel? “He loves it so much that my daughter converted,” the president said.
Trump continued to riff on Ivanka’s conversion for a while. “I didn’t know this was going to happen,” he said. “And she is so happy, and they are so happy, at least, I think they’re happy. If they’re not, we have a big story, right?”
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Hannah Senesh’s example of Jewish pride and sacrifice gains renewed attention in our anxious era
More than 80 years after she parachuted into Yugoslavia as part of the only military operation in World War II that attempted to rescue Jews, the Jewish poet and kibbutznik Hannah Senesh is having her moment.
The play “Hannah Senesh” is running through Nov. 9 at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene in New York — an excellent one-woman show, starring Jennifer Apple, that draws directly from Senesh’s diary and poems.
A new book by Douglas Century, “Crash of the Heavens: The Remarkable Story of Hannah Senesh and the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe’s Jews During World War II,” is a work of nonfiction written with the pacing and tension of a thriller.
Early next year, the noted Israeli journalist Matti Friedman will tell the story of Hannah’s team of parachutists in “Out of The Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe.”
And this week the New York Times gave Senesh the obituary treatment she had been denied in 1944, as part of its “Overlooked No More” project.
Why, in 2025, is the culture turning its attention to the story of this young poet, soldier and martyr? What does her life mean, especially, to Jews?
Hannah Senesh was born in Budapest in 1921 to an assimilated Hungarian Jewish family. Her father, Béla Szenes, was a well-known playwright and journalist who died when she was a child, and her mother, Katharine, raised her and her brother alone. Their home was cultured and secular.
As a schoolgirl, Hannah excelled in writing and was drawn to literature, but by her teenage years, antisemitism had begun to close in on Hungarian Jews. Rather than retreat, she grew more conscious of her Jewish identity and of the new Zionist movement that sought to combine Jewish pride with action.
In 1939, as the clouds of war gathered, Senesh left Budapest for Palestine. She studied at the Nahalal agricultural school for girls and later joined Kibbutz Sdot Yam near Caesarea, embracing the pioneer life. In the kibbutz she found a community rooted in the land and faith in the future of the Jewish people. There she also honed her poetic voice, writing verses that would later become part of Jewish collective memory.
I, along with countless young people, grew up singing her most famous poem in Jewish summer camps. That is “Eli, Eli” — “My God, my God, may these things never end: the sand and the sea, the rustle of the waters, the lightning of the heavens, the prayer of man.” The poem’s original title is “Walking to Caesarea,” which is where Hannah wrote it. Caesearea, the Roman capital of ancient Palestine, was where the sages suffered martyrdom. The reference to the site suggests Hannah could sense the possibility of her own martyrdom.
So does “Blessed Is the Match,” another of her best-known poems: “Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame, blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.”
As the Holocaust unfolded, Senesh could not remain on the sidelines. She volunteered for a special British unit to train Jewish parachutists who would drop behind enemy lines to aid Allied forces and assist persecuted Jews.
Hannah Senesh wears the uniform of the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, which she joined in 1943. (Yad Vashem Photo Archive)
In 1944, she parachuted into Yugoslavia as part of an Allied mission to reach occupied Hungary. Her goal was to make contact with the underground and help rescue Jews who were being deported to Auschwitz. After months of operating with Yugoslav partisans, she attempted to cross the Hungarian border but was captured by fascist forces. Tortured, interrogated and offered the chance to save her life by revealing secret details of her mission, she refused. When asked if she was British, she reportedly declared instead, “I am a Jew.”
Senesh was imprisoned in Budapest, tried for treason and executed by firing squad on Nov. 7, 1944. She was only 23. Her writings — diaries, poems, and letters — were preserved by her mother and later published, ensuring that her voice lived on. Nearly every Israeli household has a copy of her writings.
Like Anne Frank, Hannah left behind a diary chronicling her idealism and inner life. But where Anne Frank’s writings reflect a confined adolescence, albeit with a free-floating spirit, Hannah Senesh’s life was defined by agency and action.
She was not only a poet and diarist; she was a soldier who took up arms against the Nazi war machine. Her vision of heroism fused cultural Zionism with physical courage — a model of Jewish strength that is both intellectual and militant. She was, in many ways, a figure closer to Theodor Herzl than to Anne Frank: a Hungarian Jew whose secular upbringing gave way to a conscious and proud Jewish identity, and whose life was devoted to the realization of that identity in the land of Israel.
Like me, Douglas Century grew up learning Hannah’s story. In my conversation with him, he told me that “her martyrdom amazed and terrified” him. He came to know David Senesh, Hannah’s nephew, who is a therapist specializing in trauma (and who this month spoke to the Times of Israel about how his aunt’s story influenced his life and his work with former hostages and other traumatized Israelis). David had been a prisoner of war in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and spent months undergoing torture. David’s father, George, had been in a POW camp in Vichy France, and his grandmother, Catherine, had been a prisoner of the Gestapo
As David wryly told Century: “I sometimes think it’s our destiny – or something in the Senesh family DNA.”
These converging story lines of Jewish agency and sacrifice suggest why Hannah’s story may be right for these fraught times, marked by antisemitism, anti-Zionism and moral confusion.
The Folksbiene production of Hannah Senesh and the books by Century and Friedman arrive at a time when Jews feel pressure to minimize or conceal their identity. The play’s climactic moment — when Senesh asserts her Jewishness to her captors — feels like a direct message to today’s audience: a call not to erase or apologize for who we are. It is both a historical reenactment and a moral demand.
To that end, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene has launched a special fundraising initiative to make tickets for “Hannah Senesh” available free of charge for students — both Jewish and non-Jewish. With incidents of antisemitism, intolerance and hatred taking place at an alarming clip in the city, NYTF is committed to providing up to 1,000 free student tickets.
There is also a deep cultural hunger for stories of heroism and moral clarity. Senesh’s story even appears in the late Sen. John McCain’s memoir, “Why Courage Matters”: “I don’t think Hannah wanted to die for the sake of having her memory exalted in history or to prove herself equal to a romantic image she conceived for herself,” writes McCain. “Her purpose wasn’t to die. She died for her life’s purpose.”
Senesh’s story is also a rebuke to the way too many Jews and others remember the Holocaust. For decades, much of Holocaust representation has focused on Jewish victimhood and suffering. Senesh represents something different: defiance, action and dignity. Her story restores a narrative of Jewish power and resistance, embodied not by generals or politicians but by a 23-year-old woman who refused to compromise her Jewish identity. In an age when many feel ambivalent about that identity — when assimilation, fear, or politicized hostility challenge Jewish expression — her unwavering sense of purpose feels radical and necessary.
At a time when “Zionist” and its hateful cousin “Zio” are epithets, more often spat than spoken, the musical, in particular, reclaims that identity as a badge of courage. Moreover, it locates a Zionist identity where it belongs — as a symbol of idealism and resilience. In the show, Hannah makes it clear: Her Zionism echoes that of the philosopher Martin Buber, who believed that both Jews and Arabs could and would share the land.
Every time I lead services from the Reform prayer book, “Mishkan T’filah,” and I come to the readings before the Mourner’s Kaddish, I encounter Hannah’s poem, “Yesh Kochavim”: “There are stars up above, so far away we only see their light long, long after the star itself is gone.” That is Hannah Senesh — a star that fell to earth long before its time, but whose light still illuminates the world.
This is Hannah Senesh’s moment. It comes at a time that calls for models of Jewish strength, compassion and integrity. The play and Century’s book answer that call — not with nostalgia but with renewal. They remind us that, even when surrounded by darkness, the match still burns, and the stars still shine.
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Yad Vashem says it has identified 5 million Holocaust victims: ‘Behind each name is a life that mattered’
Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, says it has reached a major milestone in its efforts to uncover the identities of all of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust, crossing the 5-million name threshold with the help of AI.
That leaves 1 million names still unknown from the tally of 6 million murdered Jews that is synonymous with the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II.
Two years ago, Yad Vashem inaugurated a 26.5 foot-long “Book of Names,” which included the names of 4,800,000 victims of the Shoah, at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
Since then, researchers deployed AI technology and machine learning to analyze hundreds of millions of archival documents that were previously too extensive to research manually, according to Yad Vashem. In addition to covering large amounts of material quickly, the algorithms were taught to look out for variations of victims’ names, leading to the new identification of hundreds of thousands of victims.
Yad Vashem estimates an additional 250,000 names could still be recovered using the technology.
“Reaching 5 million names is both a milestone and a reminder of our unfinished obligation,” said Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, in a statement. “Behind each name is a life that mattered — a child who never grew up, a parent who never came home, a voice that was silenced forever. It is our moral duty to ensure that every victim is remembered so that no one will be left behind in the darkness of anonymity.”
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Trump calls on Orthodox Jewish voters in NJ to vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate
(JTA) — President Donald Trump on Sunday urged Orthodox Jewish voters in Lakewood, New Jersey, to vote for the Republican candidate in the state’s gubernatorial race.
“I need ALL of my supporters in the Orthodox community in Lakewood and its surrounding towns to vote in HUGE numbers for Jack Ciattarelli,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social. “Jack needs every single Vote in the community, including all the Yeshiva students who turned out to vote for me last year.”
Ciattarelli received a joint endorsement last week from Orthodox Jewish leaders in Lakewood as well as the neighboring towns of Jackson, Toms River, Howell and Manchester, according to the Lakewood Scoop.
But Ciattarelli also faced backlash from his opponent, Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, last month after his Muslim relations advisor said he wasn’t “taking money from Jews” at a campaign event.
In his post, Trump also touted his fierce backing in Lakewood, a center of haredi Orthodox life in the United States, during the 2024 presidential race. He boasted that Lakewood was “one of our biggest Wins anywhere in the Country with more than 90% of the Vote.” In fact, 87.8% of voters in the town cast their ballots for him.
Democrat Kamala Harris won New Jersey in 2024 with 52% of the votes, Ciattarelli is currently hoping to flip the governor’s mansion red. Sherrill is leading in polls, but some show a very tight race, according to an aggregation published by the New York Times.
Several top Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, visited campaign events in New Jersey over the weekend to rally behind Sherrill, in a sign that the party is concerned about the possible outcome of the election.
“Your Votes in this Election will save New Jersey, a State that is near and dear to my heart,” wrote Trump, before exhorting everyone to the polls in all caps.
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