Interview with VP Biden
This is the last part of a transcript from an interview with the Vice President conducted by Charlie Rose about the Israelis checking ships bound for the West Bank. It is an atypically accurate account of American-Israeli relations for an American elected official, and might be a brief ray of hope for those liberals who support Israel because of its unflinching commitment to civil liberties, rule of law, and open elections. (Arabs can vote in Israel without fear of physical harm; so can women, unlike inside Gaza or the West Bank.)
The whole text is available beyond the cut.
Vice President Biden: I just spent a long time with Golda Meir and just after the Six-Day War and before the Yom Kippur War, just days before. And she was flipping maps on her desk there and, you know, showing me this and that and we’re surrounded by and everything and I was getting very depressed. And there was a guy sitting next to me who was her aide and his name was Rabin, a future prime minister. He was then a general. And all of a sudden she said, “Would you like a photo opportunity?” And I thought, I’m 30 years old, “Yes, ma’am.” And those double doors open and we walk out and are standing there and they’re clicking pictures and I guess I must have looked really worried because of the picture she painted. She looked at me, she said, while looking at the camera, you know, we’re doing this photo shoot, she said, “Senator, why do you look so worried?” I said, “My God, Madame Prime Minister, I mean, the picture you drew.” She said, “Oh,” she said, “Don’t worry, Senator. We have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs.” And I said, I turned like she was going to tell me some secret, I looked at her and said, “Madame Prime Minister, what’s that?” She said, “We have nowhere else to go.”
