Israel finally has an honest religious Zionist as acting Foreign Minister.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely has changed protocol for foreign dignities who now will be asked to visit the Western Wall (Kotel) as well as Yad VaShem and Mt Herzl Cemetery.

The new protocol is at least the second major change she has introduced into the Foreign Ministry since her appointment by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

When she took office, she met with Foreign Ministry officials and gave them a short sermon on Torah – “Dvar Torah” in Hebrew – and instructed them to made the Jewish People’s Biblical right to Israel as part of  the “Hasbara” public relations program.

Now she wants foreign dignities to understand that official visits to Jerusalem sites should not be limited to the sadness identified with the military cemetery and the Holocaust Memorial.

Hotovely told the new head of the “Ceremonies Branch”” of the ministry to include the Kotel as part of the itinerary for foreign dignitaries, Yediot Acharonot reported.

She explained:

In my eyes, the fact that the Kotel will become part of official visits of foreign dignitaries in Israel is a meaningful statement that strengthens the position of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

This visit will take dignitaries from the ethos and sentiment of Yad VaShem, which deals with the catastrophe of the Holocaust, to the positive character of the Kotel that speaks of deep roots of the city.

This will change the view of visits from 100 years of Zionism to 3,000 years of Zionism.

Hotovely she has taken into account that there will be some dignities who will refuse to visit the Western Wall because they consider it part of “disputed territories,” depending on the visitor’s political agenda.

Barack Obama anxiously visited the Kotel when he was campaigning for president in 2008. In his last visit to Israel, he refused to come near to the holy site and instead opted for Tel Aviv.

“If there are those who refuse to visit, we will try to convince them to do so, but the change is that until now, visiting the Kotel was not even a priority in the Foreign Ministry.

She added that she will not object if dignities condition their visits to the Western Wall on their being able to go to the Temple Mount, presumably to visit mosques and not to utter forbidden non-Muslim prayers, or to the Holy Church of the Sepulchre.

The first foreign dignitary to come under the new protocol will be Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who will be met at Ben Gurion Airport next week by Hotovely. She will escort him to the Kotel.

Hotovely’s innovations – a Dvar Torah and now visits to the Kotel – are brilliant if not simple moves that should have been part of policy from Day One of the modern State of Israel.

The beauty in the changes is that leftist and pluralistic politicians and media cannot easily oppose them.

They may not like including a bit of Torah in Israel’s explanations to the international community, but how can they be against it without saying that the Torah should not an official part of Israel?

They may not like her including the Western Wall as a part of the protocol for vesting dignities, but as Hotovely said, the Western Wall is part of the Israeli consensus.

Hotovely’s real innovation is that her observance of Judaism is above politics, exactly what has been lacking in Israeli governments.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued the following statement on Thursday, April 16, Yom HaShoah, 2016.

Teresa and I join all Americans today in observing Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day. We bow our heads as we both mourn and honor the six million Jews and millions of others who perished in the most painful and horrific chapter in human history.

We lack the power to rewind the clock or to bring back those who were murdered. But we do have the power of remembrance, and we will never cease to honor the memory of those who were killed, to grieve their loss, and to cherish their names.

We remain indebted, as well, to the Holocaust survivors who, despite unspeakable trauma, continue to recount their painful experiences so that the passage of time does not lead to the forgetting of what must never be forgotten. We also draw inspiration from the reality that every child of every survivor is added testimony to the utter failure of Hitler’s evil plan.

I was profoundly moved in 2013 when I visited Yad Vashem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-President Shimon Peres. A siren wailing through Jerusalem and then a nation standing together in silent reflection signify a profound tribute to the fallen, and a call to consciousness for us all, now and in perpetuity.

For us, then, remembrance is the beginning, not the end of our responsibility. The duty we have is an active one: to work with countries and partners around the globe to fight bigotry wherever it arises, to confront aggression, insist on truth, uphold the rule of law, and promote respect for the rights and dignity of every human being.

Israelis visit Yad Vashem ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 16.

An IDF soldier at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum in Jerusalem.

Tuesday, January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On January 27, 1945 the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated by Soviet forces.

Prof. Jan Grabowski of the University of Ottawa in Canada was awarded the 2014 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research for his book memory of Holocaust survivor Abraham Meir Schwarzbaum and his family members who were murdered in the Holocaust.

His book “Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland” was published by the Indiana University Press and documents the involvement of the local Polish citizens in locating and killing Jews in their midst during the Holocaust. The book draws on materials from Polish, Jewish and German sources and focuses on accounts of the fates of individual Jews.

“When it was first published in Polish in 2011, Grabowski’s book was followed by a vigorous discussion in the mainstream Polish media, showing that his writing can effectively break through a purely academic canon and affect widespread social perceptions of this crucial chapter of Polish and Jewish history,” the judges wrote in their remarks.

“The craftsmanship of Grabowski’s study is exemplary and shows that a careful reading of archival material allows for the detailed reconstruction of personal life (and death) stories of Jews in hiding,” the judges wrote. “The committee found Jan Grabowski’s study groundbreaking and exemplary in its approach and methodology, in its analytical quality and in its contribution to the better understanding of the multi-facetedness of the Shoah.”

“If Israel had a ‘cover’ title based on what the media portrays, it would be ‘danger,’ ‘warfare,’ ‘disagreement,’ ‘pain,’ ‘death,’ ‘conflict’… and yet after just the first day I realized that this couldn’t be any further from the truth,” said Alicia Monique Blanco, Miss Arizona USA 2009.

The trip was organized by The Face of Israel organization, which offers tours for influential global figures. In Israel, the beauty queens visited all of the standard tourist destinations—like Jerusalem’s Old City, the Dead Sea, and Yad Vashem—but they also got off the beaten path with visits to the rocket-battered city of Sderot and Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

“[Israelis] have created an exquisite, highly innovative country that provides job security, democracy, health insurance, and top-quality education to people of all religions and races. Most importantly, they value life over death,” said Kristen Dalton, Miss USA 2009.

This article was published by JNS.org as an exclusive from Israel HaYom.

It had to happen. The American college student who seemed destined for first place in the least tasteful of all misguided acts of protest has been bested by Jews. And these Jews are so desperate for attention that they not only pervert the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge into an act of anti-Israel protest, but succeed in committing acts of historic blasphemy as well.

The group of protesters go by the name of “Jews Against Genocide.” Of course, the only genocide they protest is the fake genocide of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, not the any number of actual genocides currently taking place in the world, even in the nearby Middle East nation of Syria.

These misguided JAGs created a video of themselves proclaiming their moral abhorrence of (and superiority towards) the Israel Defense Force’s defensive action against the thousands of rockets lobbed into residential neighborhoods and the creation of a labyrinth of terror tunnels designed to kidnap, hold hostage and murder innocent Israelis. But that isn’t how their story goes.

According to JAG, Israelis intentionally murdered Gazan civilians in yet the latest act in a series of  acts of genocide. Whether one can keep committing acts of genocide against the same people was an esoteric not discussed by these JAG members.

The video captures various JAG members reading a list of indictment against Israel, shot at various locations in Israel including in front of Yad Vashem, the Israeli Memorial to and Museum of the Holocaust, the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem, the Israeli military radio station in Tel Aviv and in front of the Knesset.

Jews Against Genocide member claiming Israel committed genocide against Gazans in a tasteless mimicking of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

Some of the native Israelis reading from the script stumble over the words, which were obviously written by English native-speakers. And the words are so extreme, recalling the “Nakba” (the Arabic word for catastrophe, which refers to Israel’s creation), and Israel’s repeated genocides against Gazans. They JAG members. In fact, the entire Operation Protective Edge is summarized by the first speaker as “the 2137 women, men and children murdered by Israeli war criminals.”

Jews Against Genocide mock the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge with their ‘Blood Bucket Challenge” condemning Israel for its actions in 2014 Operation Protective Edge.

As the excellent website Legal Insurrection points out, JAG enthusiastically supports the Boycott of, Divestment from and Sanctions against Israel (BDS) movement.

The press release issued by Jews Against Genocide justifies its actions and threatens to undertake blood bucket challenges at Israeli Embassies around the world because “until the price that Israel pays for its crimes is higher than the profit it is making from them, Israel’s genocide of Palestinians will continue.”