Good morning, it's Friday, Oct. 13, 2023, and the day of the week when I share a quote meant to be informative or enlightening. Normally, since today is Friday the Thirteenth -- and this is the month of Halloween, I'd have a fun riff on superstitions and goblins and the like. But with the horrific happenings in the Middle East, I'm not feeling light-hearted this week. So today's quotes come from former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, with an assist from Joseph R. Biden.
In the past, I've occasionally made fun of Biden, particularly when his gift of gab gets the best of him. Not today. This week, the 46th president of the United States rose to the occasion.
On Sunday, as the horror unfolded in Israel, President Biden phoned Benjamin Netanyahu, his Israeli counterpart, to offer moral support. Even as these conversations unfolded, a spate of offensive, bigoted, and stupid statements wafted out from college campuses and other fetid precincts of the left, and not only in the United States. People who consider themselves progressive -- but who are actually deeply confused -- cheered the sadistic Hamas killers.
Not in this White House, though. On Tuesday, after his third conversation with Netanyahu, Biden went to the State Dining Room and put his administration, and his country, on the record.
Here is how he began:
"You know, there are moments in this life -- and I mean this literally -- when pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world. The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend. The bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas -- a group whose stated purpose for being is to kill Jews. This was an act of sheer evil."
The president then cited the death toll, which has grown since, in both Israel and Gaza, and recited how some of these Israeli civilians died.
"More than 1,000 civilians slaughtered -- not just killed, slaughtered -- in Israel. Among them, at least 14 American citizens killed. Parents butchered using their bodies to try to protect their children. Stomach-turning reports of being -- babies being killed. Entire families slain. Young people massacred while attending a musical festival to celebrate peace -- to celebrate peace."
America would have Israel's back in the tough days ahead, Biden promised. "Our hearts may be broken," he said, "but our resolve is clear."
Near the end of his talk, Biden passed along a vignette from a visit he took to Israel 50 years ago. In his telling, young Joe Biden met Golda Meir. Now I've followed Biden's comings and goings since the 1980s, and normally such a colorful story would trigger my antennae. In the current crisis, the story falls under another journalistic rubric, one usually rendered with a wink and a smile: "Too good to check."
"You know, just over 50 years ago … I visited Israel for the first time, as a newly elected senator," Biden said. "And I had a long, long trip -- or meeting with Golda Meir in her office just before the Yom Kippur War. And I guess she could see the consternation on my face as she described what … they were facing.
"She could tell, I guess, I was concerned. She leaned over and whispered to me -- she said, ‘Don't worry, Senator Biden. We have a secret weapon here in Israel' -- my word, this is what she said -- ‘We have no place else to go.'"
It's true for the Arabs living in Gaza, too, people caught between the murderous nihilists of Hamas and an Israeli Defense Force bent on making sure that the words spoken after the Holocaust apply in the 21st century in the Middle East: "Never again."
And that's our (extended) quote of the week.
