KERRY'S FORCED TEARS AT YAD VASHEM

Kerry's forced tears By Zev Chafets
On Monday, while on a vote-hunting expedition in south Florida, John Kerry told a Jewish audience about the time he flew an Israeli fighter jet. It is a good story, and it has the virtue of truth. I know because I was there. This was back in the mid-'80s, soon after Kerry had been elected to the Senate.....

Here's another story from that trip that Kerry didn't tell: He and his delegation were taken, as all visiting dignitaries are, to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Kerry toured the exhibits, asked questions and emerged somber but dry-eyed.

"Sen. [Al] Gore was here recently," one of his Israeli hosts said. "This museum brought him to tears."

There was probably a bit of malice in this remark; everyone knew that Kerry and Gore were rivals. Kerry responded by asking for a private moment. He went off to the side and stood alone. When he returned, according to people who were there, he had tears running down his cheeks.

I don't want this story to mean too much. A lot of politicians can make themselves cry (who knows, maybe Gore did too). I also don't think that that tears are necessarily the most appropriate response to genocide. Still, there is something chilling about Kerry's emotional detachment, even if you believe (as I do not) that the senator didn't yet know that his own grandparents were Jews — a blood connection that would have given Kerry himself a ticket to a concentration camp.