In the April issue of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg reports on a remarkable incident last fall at the residence of Vice President Joseph Biden. Speaking before guests-including leaders of Jewish organizations and Jewish officials in the Obama administration-invited to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, Biden recalled meeting Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir when he was a young man in the Senate:
"I'll never forget talking to her in her office with her assistant-a guy named Rabin-about the Six-Day War," he said. "The end of the meeting, we get up and walk out, the doors are open, and the press is taking photos She looked straight ahead and said, 'Senator, don't look so sad Don't worry. We Jews have a secret weapon.'"
He said he asked her what that secret weapon was.
"I thought she was going to tell me something about a nuclear program," Biden continued. "She looked straight ahead and she said, 'We have no place else to go.'" He paused, and repeated: "'We have no place else to go.'"
"Folks," he continued, "there is no place else to go, and you understand that in your bones. You understand in your bones that no matter how hospitable, no matter how consequential, no matter how engaged, no matter how deeply involved you are in the United States there's only one guarantee. There is really only one absolute guarantee, and that's the state of Israel."
When Biden was finished, Goldberg reports, "There was applause, and then photos, and then kosher canapés."
Biden's comments have attracted a fair amount of attention, not least from Goldberg, who was struck by their alarmist tone: "The vice president, it seemed to me, was trafficking in antiquated notions about Jewish anxiety." Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank agrees with Goldberg "that Jews are safe and happy in the United States today." But, he insists, "that could change."
Yet no one has remarked upon the fact of a sitting vice president telling a portion of the American citizenry that they cannot count on the United States government as the ultimate guarantor of their freedom and safety. The Constitution, which the vice president is sworn to uphold, guarantees to American citizens the "Blessings of Liberty" and equal protection of the law. Despite that, despite "how deeply involved" Jews "are in the United States," the occupant of the second-highest office in the land believes that American Jews should look to a foreign government as the foundation of their rights and security.
A country that once offered itself as a haven to persecuted Jews across the world now tells its Jews that in the event of some terrible outbreak of anti-Semitism they should what? Plan on boarding the next plane to Tel Aviv? It's like some crazy fiction from Philip Roth, except that when Roth contemplated an exodus in "Operation Shylock," it was to imagine the Jews fleeing Israel for Poland. Even in Roth's "The Plot Against America," which does describe the triumph of European-style anti-Semitism in the U.S., it is not a foreign government but America itself that ultimately saves America's Jews.
Imagine a vice president or president saying something similar to any other American ethnic group. To the Irish, say, long the victim of subjugation in their homeland and persecution and discrimination in the United States. Imagine a president telling the Irish that they shouldn't consider the U.S. their real home, that they should keep their bags backed, a ticket to Dublin in the drawer, just in case.
This post was edited on 3/29 9:59 PM by Scout59
"I'll never forget talking to her in her office with her assistant-a guy named Rabin-about the Six-Day War," he said. "The end of the meeting, we get up and walk out, the doors are open, and the press is taking photos She looked straight ahead and said, 'Senator, don't look so sad Don't worry. We Jews have a secret weapon.'"
He said he asked her what that secret weapon was.
"I thought she was going to tell me something about a nuclear program," Biden continued. "She looked straight ahead and she said, 'We have no place else to go.'" He paused, and repeated: "'We have no place else to go.'"
"Folks," he continued, "there is no place else to go, and you understand that in your bones. You understand in your bones that no matter how hospitable, no matter how consequential, no matter how engaged, no matter how deeply involved you are in the United States there's only one guarantee. There is really only one absolute guarantee, and that's the state of Israel."
When Biden was finished, Goldberg reports, "There was applause, and then photos, and then kosher canapés."
Biden's comments have attracted a fair amount of attention, not least from Goldberg, who was struck by their alarmist tone: "The vice president, it seemed to me, was trafficking in antiquated notions about Jewish anxiety." Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank agrees with Goldberg "that Jews are safe and happy in the United States today." But, he insists, "that could change."
Yet no one has remarked upon the fact of a sitting vice president telling a portion of the American citizenry that they cannot count on the United States government as the ultimate guarantor of their freedom and safety. The Constitution, which the vice president is sworn to uphold, guarantees to American citizens the "Blessings of Liberty" and equal protection of the law. Despite that, despite "how deeply involved" Jews "are in the United States," the occupant of the second-highest office in the land believes that American Jews should look to a foreign government as the foundation of their rights and security.
A country that once offered itself as a haven to persecuted Jews across the world now tells its Jews that in the event of some terrible outbreak of anti-Semitism they should what? Plan on boarding the next plane to Tel Aviv? It's like some crazy fiction from Philip Roth, except that when Roth contemplated an exodus in "Operation Shylock," it was to imagine the Jews fleeing Israel for Poland. Even in Roth's "The Plot Against America," which does describe the triumph of European-style anti-Semitism in the U.S., it is not a foreign government but America itself that ultimately saves America's Jews.
Imagine a vice president or president saying something similar to any other American ethnic group. To the Irish, say, long the victim of subjugation in their homeland and persecution and discrimination in the United States. Imagine a president telling the Irish that they shouldn't consider the U.S. their real home, that they should keep their bags backed, a ticket to Dublin in the drawer, just in case.
This post was edited on 3/29 9:59 PM by Scout59
