This week, Israel quietly hosted the largest bipartisan delegation of American lawmakers in history—yet the event has barely registered in international media.
A total of 250 state legislators representing all 50 U.S. states landed in Israel on Monday. The program, titled “50 States, 1 Israel”, began at the Foreign Ministry and continued with a symbolic ceremony on Tuesday, where the lawmakers planted 50 trees—one for each state—at one of the sites struck during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office described it as the biggest bipartisan lawmaker delegation ever to visit the Jewish state. At the Foreign Ministry, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar used the occasion to press U.S. lawmakers to strengthen anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) legislation in their states. So far, 38 states have already passed laws, resolutions, or executive orders targeting the BDS movement.
But while the gathering might have been expected to dominate headlines, it passed almost unnoticed outside Israel. The timing may explain why. The lawmakers arrived just one day before the United Nations Commission of Inquiry officially ruled for the first time that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. On that same day, Israel’s highly condemned ground invasion into Gaza City began.
The contrast is stark: as the UN issued one of its gravest findings against Israel, and as international outrage mounted over fresh military escalation in Gaza, the largest-ever show of U.S. state-level political solidarity unfolded in near silence.
Supporters of Israel hailed the visit as proof of unwavering American support, but critics see the muted coverage as deliberate.
To them, the absence of international reporting on such an extraordinary delegation—250 lawmakers from across the U.S.—is not just an oversight; it reflects the uneasy tension between Israel’s actions in Gaza and the political support it continues to receive from the United States.
The Jewish state is “drowning in a sea of fake, of lies,”Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar said, adding that, “so your presence here is more important than ever. You are on the ground, seeing Israel and the truth with your own eyes.”
