Israeli PM Naftali Bennett to American Jewish leaders: 'We have to redesign our relationship'

NEW YORK (JTA) - The first thing Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, facing a room full of the leaders of the American Jewish community: "I wish my mom were here."

The son of American immigrants to Israel, Bennett, like his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu, speaks a fluent, nearly accentless English, and spent years living in the United States as both a child and an adult.

But in other crucial ways, Bennett sounded different from Netanyahu in his first public address to American Jewish leaders as prime minister. The speech, delivered in Manhattan a couple hours after he addressed the Un...