OWe will wonder for a long time about the choice, by the American Democrats, of the octogenarian Joe Biden over Donald Trump, only four years his junior, but clearly more pugnacious. Moreover, it is less the age of the current tenant of the White House that is in question than his slip-ups, which are as repeated as they are embarrassing. This is how the American president, in April, urged Benjamin Netanyahu to do not attack… Haifa. He confused the large port in northern Israel with Rafah, the city in the south of the Gaza Strip, where more than half of the population of the Palestinian enclave has taken refuge, on the border with Egypt.
It doesn’t matter anyway, since the most powerful man on the planet didn’t even manage to prevent the ongoing operation against Rafah. And if Joe Biden waited seven months of carnage to really raise his voice towards Benjamin Netanyahu, it is because his loyalty to Israel is anchored in a founding experience, already more than half a century old.
The American president, born in 1942 in Pennsylvania, was raised by his two Catholic parents with deep respect for the State of Israel. Elected as a Democratic senator from Delaware at the age of 30, he went to Egypt and Israel in August 1973 for his first trip abroad as a parliamentarian. Disappointed at having only been received by second-rank officials in Egypt, he considers on the contrary his meeting with the head of the Israeli government, Golda Meir, as “one of the most notable” of his life.
A fervent “Zionist”
Joe Biden will often later recount how the Prime Minister revealed to him “the secret weapon” from Israel: “We have nowhere else to go. » Golda Meir, a perfect English speaker due to her years of training in the United States, insisted at the time in the American media that the “Palestinian nation” does not exist any more than the “Palestinian people”. But the Prime Minister also affirmed that she did not “to be able to forgive the Palestinians for [les] force to kill their children »a quote widely used today in Israel.
The young senator Biden returns so enthusiastic about his stay in Israel that he begins to declare himself “Zionist”a fervent commitment that he has repeatedly reiterated in public, specifying each time that he “ you don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist ». In June 1982, he supported the government of Menachem Begin in its invasion of Lebanon, despite numerous civilian casualties. This support is so exalted that the Prime Minister Israeli must itself temper Joe Biden, recalling that all belligerents are required to spare women and children. Four years later, Joe Biden ardently defends colossal military aid to Israel in Congress: “It’s the best $3 billion investment we’ve ever made. If there was no Israel, the United States should invent an Israel to protect their interests in the region. »
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