Naftali Bennett's whereabouts had become something of a mystery in Israel this week, with the former prime minister absent from public view in the middle of an active election campaign. The answer, it turns out, was a golf cart's ride away from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
Bennett spent the past several days in Sun Valley, Idaho, taking part in the closed-door Allen & Company conference, widely regarded as the most exclusive and secretive gathering in global business and technology. According to Israeli media reports, he received a personal invitation from the conference organizers and was the only Israeli invited to attend this year.
The conference, held annually at the Sun Valley Lodge since 1983, draws an eclectic mix of tech titans, media executives, investors and political figures for a week of off-the-record conversations, hikes, and deals struck far from the cameras. This year's attendee list, compiled from photographs and reporting rather than any official roster, which the conference does not release, included Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Tim Cook, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Netflix's Reed Hastings, News Corp and Fox chairman Lachlan Murdoch, and Ivanka Trump, along with veteran journalist Anderson Cooper.
Bennett took part in a closed-door discussion on the Middle East alongside Jared Kushner, senior adviser to and son-in-law of President Trump, and Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates' ambassador to Washington, according to Jewish Insider, which cited reporting from Puck News. The conversation took place months after Israel sent an Iron Dome battery and operators to assist the UAE during its own exposure to Iranian missile and drone fire during the recent war. No details of what was discussed have been made public, in keeping with the conference's famously strict confidentiality rules, under which even the world's wealthiest attendees are required to wear plain name tags for the duration of the event.
Bennett's appearance at the summit comes at an uneasy political moment at home. Polls have shown a sustained decline in the number of Knesset seats projected for Together, the party he founded with opposition leader Yair Lapid, and strategic adviser Nevo Cohen recently suggested that Bennett could ultimately step back from political life altogether in light of the slide. Bennett has also faced a pointed public attack from his own former adviser, Dr. Amatzia Samkai, who called the plan Bennett has floated for weakening Iran "far-fetched" and accused him of presenting a false picture to the public.
