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John shares some of his experiences and observations on his recent trip to Israel during this week's update.

We are a vortex, almost an alternative universe of reality when things that were logical 30 years ago are suddenly brought into question. Bill Nye, the Science Guy used to teach that gender was based upon which chromosomes you received at birth. Now, the self-proclaimed "Cis-guy, Bill Nye" teaches that gender is fluid and can change everyday. When a world moves away from simple premises such as these, things such as our birth sex, personal conduct, decency, morality and acceptable behavior become subject to one's feelings and emotions. This creates a moving standard with no foundation, no basis for evaluation,...

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn turned down an invitation by Israel’s opposition chief to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, a British newspaper reported. Corbyn responded to the invitation, made in the spring by Isaac Herzog, the head of Israel’s Zionist Union political list, several weeks later, saying his schedule was full and that he would send either Tom Watson, the deputy party leader, or Iain McNicol, the party general secretary, in November, according to the Guardian. The invitation from Herzog came in April after former London Mayor Ken Livingstone said Nazi leader Adolf Hitler supported Zionism. Already suspended...

Activist and writer Elie Wiesel, the World War Two death camp survivor who won a Nobel Peace Prize for becoming the life-long voice of millions of Holocaust victims, has died, Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem said on Saturday. Wiesel, a philosopher, speaker, playwright and professor who also campaigned for the tyrannized and forgotten around the world, was 87. The Romanian-born Wiesel lived by the credo expressed in "Night," his landmark story of the Holocaust - "to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time." In awarding the Peace Prize in 1986, the Nobel Committee praised Wiesel...

President Barack Obama will visit the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on the evening of January 27, where he will take part in the first ever ceremony in the United States posthumously honoring four Righteous Among The Nations. The event is being held in partnership with Yad Vashem. Set to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the reception will honor two American and two Polish citizens. This is the first ceremony of its kind to be held in the United States. The families of the four honorees will be in attendance, along with many other distinguished guests. ...

JERUSALEM – The Nazi soldiers made their orders very clear: Jewish American prisoners of war were to be separated from their fellow brothers in arms and sent to an uncertain fate. But Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds would have none of that. As the highest-ranking noncommissioned officer held in the German POW camp, he ordered more than 1,000 Americans captives to step forward with him and brazenly pronounced: "We are all Jews here." He would not waver, even with a pistol to his head, and his captors eventually backed down. Seventy years later, the Knoxville, Tennessee, native is being posthumously recognized...

Dorin Cioba the leader of three million Roma around the world, landed in Israel on Wednesday. Roma are widely known as Gypsies. On his first visit to Israel, Cioba, who is president of the International Romani Union, plans to visit the Roma community in Jerusalem as well as the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. The photographer Roni Ben-Ari invited Cioaba to Israel for the opening of her exhibit that documents the life of Gypsies in the city of Lugoj, Romania. The exhibit opens on Thursday at the Museum of Israeli Art in Ramat Gan. "This is the first time that I...

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed support for Israel in its struggle against Hamas and its supporters, and cited the three Israeli teenagers who had been recently murdered. "I follow closely what's going on in Israel," said Putin to a delegation of rabbis. "I support the struggle of Israel as it attempts to protect its citizens. I also heard about the shocking murder of the three youths. It is an act that cannot be allowed, and I ask you to transmit my condolences to the families." Putin referenced Jews during the Holocaust, saying, "I remember visiting in the Yad...

A shocking video taped publicly by left-wing activists on the campus of Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum has provoked a storm of anger in Israel. The video was taken in front of a monument commemorating Holocaust victims, and features an actress dressed as a prostitute calling herself “the Holocaust,” who says the Jewish nation should thank her for teaching it “how to round up Palestinians in concentration camps.” Throughout her expletive-filled tirade the actress, who was flanked by a man who appeared to be a bodyguard, made obscene gestures and screamed at shocked members of the public who had come...

Project will make Holocaust photos and documents available on Internet; first batch already hits web; viewers can add their stories. Talkbacks (1) The world's largest collection of Holocaust documents is going digital. Israel's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, is teaming up with Google to make its photographs and documents interactive and searchable on the Internet. The first 130,000 photos hit the web Wednesday. Although much of Yad Vashem's archive was already available through its formidable website, the new project enables users to search keywords and data just like a Google search. A social network-like component allows viewers to contribute to the...

Why people hurt each other is an important question. The answer

When Lyndon Baines Johnson was a young congressman, he saved 42 Jews from the Nazis. Indirect evidence shows that he rescued another 400 Jews, including the famed orchestra conductor Erich Leinsdorf. While Johnson didn't risk his life to save Jews, as European non-Jews did, there are those who believe that he should be honored in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's Holocaust Memorial Museum, for being what the Israelis call a Righteous Gentile. After the 1967 Arab-Israel Six Day War, when he was President, he met with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey. Mr. Kosygin asked him why America supported Israel...

Israel's Holocaust memorial said on Monday it was honoring a German officer whose rescue of a Polish Jewish musician is documented by Roman Polanski's 2002 Hollywood film "The Pianist." The late Captain Wilm Hosenfeld is one of the few German World War Two soldiers to win the title of "Righteous among the Nations," among some 22,000 people honored for helping Jews avoid death in the Nazi Holocaust, in which 6 million perished. In a statement, the Yad Vashem museum said it had decided to honor Hosenfeld, played in the movie by the German-born actor Thomas Kretschmann, after verifying that he...

ROME, NOV. 4, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation wants Pope John XXIII to receive the honorary title given to those who took extraordinary measures to save Jews from the Holocaust. Baruch Tenembaum is proposing that the Italian Pope be given the title "Righteous Among the Nations" by the Yad Vashem. "If we fail to declare Pope John XXIII as 'Righteous Among the Nations,' our kids will be the ones who will do that," Tenembaum said. The Jewish leader's appeal comes as the Church has just marked the 50th anniversary of John XXIII's election to the See...

Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, launched an Arabic Web site this year to combat Holocaust denial in the Arab world. Because the Nazi extermination of European Jews during World War II spurred the establishment of Israel, many Arabs believe the Palestinians have paid the price for the Holocaust, and anti-Zionist sentiment has led to Holocaust denial and expressions of anti-Semitism. When the site was introduced, Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev, said it was intended to offer moderates in Arab countries an alternative source of information. Since then, some 270,000 viewers have visited the site, from the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Saudi...

Stockholm, Jun 19, 2008 / 04:05 am (CNA).- A Latvian priest has been awarded the title “Righteous among the Nations” by Yad Vashem for risking his life to save Jews during World War II. Father Kasimir Vilnis was parish pastor in Riga, Latvia during the war. He hid Jews from Nazi persecution in his church and in houses belonging to the church. The heroic actions of Fr. Vilnis were attested to by David Packin, a man who later left for the United States.When the communists were about to occupy Latvia in 1944, Father Kasimir had to flee to Sweden,...

Poland Honors Those Who Rescued Jews By RYAN LUCAS WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's president on Wednesday honored more than 50 people who saved Jews in Poland during the Nazi Holocaust, including the German officer who helped Wladyslaw Szpilman, the musician whose story was the basis of the film "The Pianist." President Lech Kaczynski, who has long been an advocate of close relations with the Jewish community, clasped red-ribboned medals around the necks of 31 Poles who saved Jews during the World War II Nazi occupation. Twelve more people were honored but unable to attend, and 10 received an award...

(IsraelNN.com) Three boxes of documents belonging to Israel Kastner, whose negotiations with Eichmann for Jews remain controversial to this day, were presented to Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem this week. The private archives, comprising three boxes of letters of correspondence with Nazi officials, Jewish organizations and families, were presented in an official ceremony on Sunday. In attendance were Kastner's daughter, his granddaughter Merav Michaeli (a popular television personality who MC'ed the event), survivors of the “Kasztner Train,” and others. The papers, which also document Holocaust rescue efforts of the Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest, were given to the...

At Yad Vashem, Polish pres. calls Holocaust 'lesson for future' By The Associated Press Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Tuesday visited Israel's official Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where he referred to the history of Jewish life in Poland and urged the world to remember the lessons of the Holocaust. "The nation which I represent, and on the soil of which the German Nazis committed their terrible, criminal plan of the Holocaust, knows very well the importance of maintaining the memory of these events that broke a one thousand year presence of Jews in Poland," he wrote in the...

A Nobel Prize for peace - and image By Yossi Melman Last Update: 11/09/2006 12:39 In 1942, in the midst of World War Two, Irena Sendler secretly packed a few Jewish children into an ambulance and smuggled them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. In the front passenger seat, next to the driver, she put a dog, whose loud barking drowned out the crying children. Throughout the war, Sendler worked to save Jewish children - 2,500 in total. In an interview she gave in 1995 to Jewish-French writer and filmmaker Marek Halter, she said she regretted only one thing: "I could...