Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, announced on Tuesday evening that the RJC would award the inaugural Lindsey Graham Statesman Award at the group’s yearly leadership summit in August, which will be dedicated to the late South Carolina senator after his death earlier this month. 

Coleman, a former colleague and longtime friend of Graham’s, made the comments at a virtual event organized by the Israeli-American Council to pay tribute to the late senator’s support for Israel and the Jewish people. The former Minnesota senator was one of several prominent Jewish and pro-Israel figures who gathered to honor Graham’s record of support for the Jewish community.

“To our Jewish community, Lindsey was more than an ally. He was family and he said so himself. Reflecting once on how our community had rallied around him, he put it simply, ‘We are family,’ and he meant it,” Coleman said. “At the RJC leadership summit taking place next month in Las Vegas, we will be dedicating the event in his memory and awarding the first annual Lindsey Graham Statesman Award.”

Coleman said that Graham’s sudden death was a loss for the Jewish community and for the U.S. as a whole, telling attendees, “Our hearts break because Lindsey had so much left to give. He was not finished. There were more fights he wanted to win, more people he wanted to lift up, more good he wanted to do. We were not ready to lose him.”

“Our community is diminished tonight. The United States is diminished tonight, but every one of us who knew Lindsey Graham is richer for it and better for it,” he said.

Attendees at the virtual gathering, which was hosted by IAC CEO Elan Carr, included Dr. Miriam Adelson, the philanthropist and Republican megadonor; Betsy Berns Korn, the former AIPAC president and chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Jewish Federations of North America CEO Eric Fingerhut; American Jewish Committee (AJC) CEO Ted Deutch; Pastor John Hagee, the founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel; and Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad).

Ronen and Orna Neutra, the parents of slain Israeli American hostage Omer Neutra, made an unscheduled appearance to speak about Graham’s advocacy for their son and other hostages during their captivity in Gaza. Omer Neutra’s remains were taken by Hamas terrorists into Gaza and held there for more than two years after he was killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

“Our family came to know Sen. Graham shortly after Oct. 7, when our son, [IDF] Capt. Omer Neutra, was taken hostage,” Orna Neutra said. “From the earliest days of the crisis, Sen. Graham was one of the strongest and most consistent voices in the Senate supporting Israel and calling for the hostages to be released. He spoke clearly about Iran’s role in supporting Hamas and argued that Hamas could not remain in power after the war.”

“Whenever we asked to meet, [Graham] made himself available,” she continued. “He was straightforward and matter of fact. He never told us what we wanted to hear, only what he believed. He offered no false hope. He listened carefully. He asked thoughtful questions, and he treated our concerns with seriousness and respect.”

Orna Neutra recounted a meeting Graham had with several hostage families where he told them, “I wish you were all my constituents. I wish you were all from South Carolina.” She explained that Graham was suggesting “that he wished he could do even more for each and every one of us personally.”

Berns Korn similarly praised Graham for his allyship with the Jewish people and remarked how she would accidentally cross paths with the South Carolina senator almost every time they separately visited the Israeli prime minister’s office. 

“To me, to the conference, to the Jewish community, and to the people of Israel, Sen. Graham was more than an ally. He was a true friend,” Berns Korn said. “Friends like Lindsey Graham come along once in a generation.”

“You’d make the long trip, race through the schedule, thinking we’re moving fast, and somehow Lindsey and his staff [were] already there, already briefed, already asking the next question, and already formulating a strategy,” she continued. “That was Lindsey. He was present. He was engaged. He listened carefully and moved with purpose. He built trust with Israeli leaders and American Jewish organizations. He built coalitions across the aisle and developed relationships with communities who valued his wise counsel, judgment, and his leadership.”

Shemtov noted that Norm Brownstein, the veteran Washington lobbyist, was a mutual friend of his and Graham’s, and said that Brownstein “would often tell me that the one thing about Lindsey Graham was that he had a genuine friendship with the Jewish people and a genuine concern for the needs of the Jewish people and for the needs that Israel had, whatever they were, and he always would reiterate that not only in words but in practice.”

“Within darkness, within negativity, there is always the latent opposite. So, as we see dark forces in the political world that are beginning to emerge and expand, sadly, let us not forget the bright ones we’ve been fortunate to know, people like Sen. Lindsey Graham,” Shemtov said. “The Jewish people have survived for millennia through strong faith in God, and through the many agents and messengers that God sent from outside the Jewish community to be our friends, our supporters, and those who reinforced us.”

Deutch, who served in Congress from 2010-2022 as a Democrat, recounted his first experience traveling with Graham after being elected to the House, joining Graham’s delegation to the Munich Security Conference at the invitation of the late Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). Deutch praised Graham for his emphasis on bipartisanship while on the international stage.

“Lindsey always understood why it was so important for us to do that together,” Deutch said in a prerecorded address. “When I think about what we’ll miss about him, the way that he stood up for American leadership, understanding that especially how much that leadership was strengthened when we did it together as Americans, Democrats and Republicans standing together, that’s the way that I’m going to remember him.”

The AJC CEO urged attendees “to think about that and reflect upon that in the way that we go about our work, whether we work in the Jewish world, we work in the government or diplomatic world or whether we’re just American citizens who are thinking about how to make the country better for all of us.”

Fingerhut praised Graham for understanding that, “In times of evil, indifference to evil is evil. Neutrality always helps the killer, not the victim.” 

“Lindsey Graham always took seriously all those who threaten other people. Lindsey Graham always took seriously all those who threatened the Jewish people,” Fingerhut said. “Lindsey Graham understood the dangers of indifference and neutrality, and Lindsey Graham understood that neutrality helps the killer, not the victim. Lindsey Graham was not neutral. He took sides. He was not indifferent. He was passionate and committed and relentless.”

In Coleman’s remarks, the RJC chairman highlighted Graham’s close friendships with Adelson and her late husband, Sheldon, telling the audience that, “They were always talking. When he [Graham] went into battle, he was comforted by knowing that they would be with him.”

For her part, Adelson spoke of the friendship that she and her late husband, the billionaire casino mogul, shared with Graham over more than three decades, reminiscing about the South Carolina senator’s aversion to gambling and his daily phone calls with her spouse. 

“We met Lindsey and — as a physician, I love to see the brain, the eyes are [the window into] our brain — they were so pure and blue. You could see what he was thinking about. He was so honest, with integrity, and Sheldon and me fell in love with him.”

Adelson said that her late husband’s longtime secretary told her that “there was not a day that” Sheldon did not “talk with Lindsey.” 

“They talked about Israel,” Adelson said. “Lindsey gave him advice. Sheldon gave him advice, and they had fun.”

She shared that Graham had once opted to meet tourists in the Adelsons’ Las Vegas Sands property rather than gamble in the VIP room alongside the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who had accompanied Graham to visit the couple. 

“Instead of playing, he was meeting people,” Adelson said of Graham. “Lindsey loved people, and they loved him from the left, from the right. He was a fantastic person.”

Adelson said that Graham and her late husband were similar in their steadfast commitment to their families, comparing Sheldon Adelson supporting his first wife’s three children from a previous marriage to the late senator adopting his younger sister, Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) after their parents died. Adelson said she hoped to meet Graham’s sister, who was appointed to serve out the remainder of her brother’s term last week and has since announced plans to run for a full term, for dinner in Washington, D.C., in the near future and urged her to “choose life and success” in her new role. 

“Know that so many people loved your brother and admired him,” Adelson said before acknowledging that she was tearing up. “He is a good man. Inside the heart, he is such a good man, and I want to tell you, Darline … that I really admired and loved your brother. I miss him.”