Kaine and his wife, first lady Anne Holton, last night were guests at the solemn opening ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial outside Jerusalem for the start of Israel's annual commemoration of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
"It was a very, very powerful service," Kaine told the Richmond Times-Dispatch last night in a brief phone interview.
"We were all really struck by the kind of sad irony of the fact that this day, a Holocaust denier was speaking at the conference on racism on the very day when for years, this country has commemorated and remembered the evils of the Holocaust."
The governor was referring to a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Geneva, during which he labeled Israel a "most cruel and repressive racist regime."
The remarks spurred a walkout of Western diplomats at the conference, which the United States boycotted...
Thanks to Tim Kaine for standing up to Iran's nuclear-weapons-seeking, holocaust-denying president. Kaine's comments were particularly powerful because of where he was, in Israel and specifically at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial near Jerusalem. I visited Yad Vashem in 1985 when I was studying at Tel Aviv University, and it was a powerful, emotional experience I'll never forget. Unfortunately, others already ARE forgetting the Holocaust, not to mention evil men like Iran's president who actively deny that the Holocaust - the deliberate, state sponsored murder of 6 million Jews, plus millions of gays, lesbians, Roma (gypsies), Slavs, mentally handicapped, etc. - even occurred. How can someone like that be president of a major nation in the year 2009? It boggles the mind (note: we've also got the president of Zimbabwe saying he wants to be "a Hitler ten-fold," but Mugabe's not anywhere near acquiring nuclear weapons, like Iran appears to be).
