Biden toured Israel and the territories it held some 40 days before the start of the war on October 6. As he tells it, he then sat down with the American-raised, Kyiv-born Israeli prime minister, who showed him various maps and explained to him exactly why Israel’s situation, as military tensions ramped up, was dire. Biden was apparently incredibly impressed by the Israeli leader, but described the meeting as depressing.
Meir then asked Biden to pose for a photo.
“She said, ‘Senator, you look so worried,’” he recalled, speaking at an Israeli Embassy Independence Day celebration in 2015. “I said, ‘Well, my God, Madam Prime Minister,’ and I turned to look at her. I said, ‘The picture you paint.’ She said, ‘Oh, don’t worry. We have’ — I thought she only said this to me. She said, ‘We have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs: You see, we have no place else to go.’”
Channel 13’s Nadav Eyal has now provided excerpts from a classified memo of the meeting made by a senior Israeli official who was in attendance.
The unnamed official said Biden told Meir that during meetings in Cairo prior to his arrival in Israel, officials there assured him they accept “Israel’s military superiority.”
Biden warned that Israel’s actions in the territories it had captured during the Six Day War, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, were leading to “creeping annexation.”
Since he believed Israel was militarily dominant in the region, he suggested the Jewish state might initiate a first step for peace through unilateral withdrawals from areas with no strategic importance.
The official said Biden criticized the Nixon administration for being “dragged by Israel,” complaining that it was impossible to have a real debate in the Senate about the Middle East as senators were fearful of saying things unpopular with Jewish voters.
Meir rejected Biden’s call for unilateral steps, launching into a speech about the region and its problems (possibly the spiel Biden alluded to in his own comments years later).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/when-biden-met-golda-new-details-emerge-of-storied-1973-encounter/
From your article:
“It was the eve of the Yom Kippur War,”
Biden was claiming to be a liaison for the 6 Day War.
Yom Kippur War / 6 Day War - These are two completely different things, right? Or am I missing something?