US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his Zionism and the strong ties between the US and Israel in his remarks upon landing in Israel on Wednesday.
“You need not be a Jew to be Zionist,” he said, repeating past comments to which Prime Minister Yair Lapid referred in his remarks at Ben-Gurion Airport.
The two-day visit to Israel is Biden’s 10th, but his first as president.
Remarking on his first trip to Israel in 1973, during which he met then-prime minister Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin, who later became prime minister, Biden said he had “the great honor of living part of the great history of this great country.”
“Every chance to return to this great country, where the ancient roots of the Jewish people date back to biblical times, is a blessing,” he said. “The connection between the Israeli people and the American people is bone deep, and generation after generation that connection grows. We invest in each other. We dream together.”
“The connection between the Israeli people and the American people is bone deep, and generation after generation that connection grows as we invest in each other and dream together.”Joe Biden
Biden spoke of the US and Israel partnering on “the most cutting-edge defense systems in the world,” shortly before he went to a presentation by the Defense Ministry that included an Iron Dome battery and the laser-based Iron Beam missile-defense system.
Hellbound and Down 