Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who was one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress, died suddenly at 71 on July 11.
Graham had returned from Ukraine, where he met with Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky, the day before.
Last month, Graham won the Republican primary in South Carolina, positioning him for a fifth Senate term in November.
He had held the seat since Jan. 3, 2003; his current term was set to expire in January 2027.
Graham was a paragon of an era when support for Israel and for robust US intervention overseas were emblems of bipartisanship.
After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, he organized a joint Republican-Democratic trip to Israel and said it typified how Americans viewed and supported the country.
“Ten percent of the United States Senate is in Israel,” Graham said at a Tel Aviv press conference on Oct. 22. “Ten percent of the United States Senate is in Israel because we care. Five Republicans and five Democrats. If I had a bigger plane, we probably would have brought the entire Senate.”
Graham’s death means that the Senate and Republican Party have lost one of its most durable pro-Israel voices at a time when anti-Israel sentiment is on the rise.
In his more than three decades in Congress, first in the House and then in the Senate since 2003, Graham aggressively backed US aid to Israel, advanced a hawkish line on Iran and met often with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in both Israel and the US.
“Lindsey understood that the security of Israel and America are inseparable. He devoted his life to defending America, strengthening our alliance and standing up for the free world,” Netanyahu said the day after Graham died “Israel has lost one of its greatest friends. America has lost a great patriot. I have lost a beloved friend.”
Graham’s most recent visit to Israel was in February, ahead of the US-Israel war on Iran, which he backed.
Iranian media celebrated his death, which came a week after pro-regime Iranians held up placards with a target superimposed on a portrait of Graham at the funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was slain in the initial joint US-Israel attacks, Feb. 28.
Graham was a vocal backer of Israel’s military responses to attacks by Hamas, including in 2014 and after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza and augured a period of declining support for Israel.
On Oct. 8, 2023, Graham called for Israel to defeat Hamas “by any and all means necessary.”
Graham continued to promote a two-state solution.
Last year, he made news for embracing Netanyahu’s announcement of a plan to “taper” US aid to Israel, saying it should be done sooner than Netanyahu’s 10-year timeline. This spring, he publicly urged Israel to refrain from bombing Iran’s oil refineries.
Graham initially opposed Trump’s rise, even running against him in 2015 ahead of the Republican primaries that year, but later became one of his closest confidants and supporters.
Graham represented the kind of Republican who appealed to Jews: a moderate who sought comity with Democrats, proposing compromise on abortion and immigration.
In recent years, he became an agent of reassurance to Republican Jews rattled by rising antiSemitism and appalled at the apparent gains of the far right.
“I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party,” he said last year at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference, to cheers.
“We will beat you politically,” he said, directing his comments to anti-Israel Republicans. “I want the world to know: Anti-Semitism, anti-Israel rhetoric, anti-Israel thought is not the road to being elected a Republican. You will lose.”
Graham initially rejected Trump as disastrous for the party, even after his 2016 nomination was assured. “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed . . . and we will deserve it,” he said in a May, 2016 tweet, even as a major Graham backer, the pro-Israel philanthropist Sheldon Adelson was set to advise Republicans to rally behind Trump.
But he soon embraced Trump, becoming a close adviser and a perpetual golf buddy.
“It’s evolved because he is president of the United States, he beat me like a drum and I want to help him where I can because there’s a lot on this man’s plate,” Graham said in 2018 on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Still, Graham continued to support robust US backing for Ukraine in its war to repel Russia’s 2022 invasion, against Trump’s preferences. Just hours before his death, Graham was in Kiev coordinating congressional sanctions against Russia.
Graham, who never married and had no children, was up for reelection in November.
His outlook on Israel fit into a broad portfolio that included helming the Senate Budget Committee, pushing for a stronger US response to Russia and broadly advancing an interventionist foreign policy.
In the early 2000s, Graham joined with Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Jewish Democrat, in the early 2000s to promote a robust interventionist foreign policy.
Dubbing themselves the “Three Amigos,” the trio traveled to war zones and tried to pitch US intervention in foreign conflicts.
Graham was the last survivor of the group, following McCain’s death in 2018 and Lieberman’s in 2024.
The men were “an inseparable trio, and the best friends Israel and lovers of freedom ever had in the US Senate,” the Republican Jewish Coalition said in a statement responding to Graham’s death.
“We are sure they are welcoming him at Heaven’s gate — but like all of us, thinking it tragic to join them now when he had so much more to accomplish here on earth.”
