President Joe Biden wasted no time after landing in Israel on Wednesday to commit an embarrassing brain-freeze moment.
During his remarks at the arrival ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, Biden vowed to “keep alive the honor of the Holocaust” before immediately correcting himself.
The president was speaking about his planned trip to Yad Vashem and participating in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Hall of Remembrance, a Holocaust commemoration site in Israel.
Biden said:
I will once more return to the hallowed ground of Yad Vashem to honor six million Jewish lives who were stolen in a genocide and continue, which we must do every, every, day, continue to bear witness. To keep alive the truth and honor of the Holocaust…horror of the Holocaust, honor those we lost so that we never ever forget that lesson.
Biden corrected himself, but it was an embarrassing stumble from the president of the United States on Israeli soil.
The president, wearing his aviator sunglasses, read from notes on the podium as a stiff breeze blew on the runway.
Biden also vowed to “continue our shared unending work to fight the poison of antisemitism wherever it rises its ugly head.”
“Wherever we find it in the world, we make real on the promise of never again by taking it on,” he said.