New England Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft is in Israel this week along with 19 NFL Hall of Fame football stars as part of a special solidarity mission with the Jewish state.

“Touchdown in Israel: Mission of Excellence” is being sponsored by the Jewish billionaire, the first trip of its kind specific to former Pro Football Hall of Famers, ESPN reported.

The Foreign Ministry pulled an animated 50-second video clip it uploaded last week which ridiculed foreign correspondents for their coverage of last summer’s Israel-Hamas fighting. The video sparked complaints from the foreign press.

Tahini is used to market Israeli culture as a native culture of the Middle East. Tahini is a paste made from ground hulled sesame seeds and is used in North African and Middle Eastern cuisine. To make tahini sesame seeds are soaked in water and then crushed to separate the bran from the kernels. The crushed seeds are soaked in salt water, causing the bran to sink. The floating kernels are skimmed off the surface, toasted, and ground to produce an oily paste. 

Israeli students going abroad are to undergo public diplomacy training in order to defend Israeli policies on foreign soil.

The public diplomacy training, known as Hasbara, will be made mandatory for the students to counter Israel's perceived negative image abroad.

The first set of students who are to travel to Germany, China and France to pursue their higher education have already begun training as part of the course, according to the Israeli daily Ynet news.

VOI’s Josh Hasten deals with two timely topics: Senator Bernie Sanders and a conference on Israeli public diplomacy. First, he is joined in-studio by HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl, who discusses a recent NPR interview, in which Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was asked if he held joint US-Israel citizenship. Sanders didn’t take the bait, recognizing that the reporter was insinuating he had dual loyalties.

The Foreign Ministry took a stab at the international media's coverage of Gaza in a satirical, animated video posted on the Internet on Sunday. Ahead of a UN Human Rights Council report due to be published this week on last summer's war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the ministry issued the clip intended to urge the world to become more aware of the realities of oppression and terrorism in the coastal Palestinian territory. 

Two large potholes appeared on the highway leading to the village, the result of bad weather and human negligence. Numerous accidents occurred there, claiming many victims. As in Chelm, the who’s who of the village convened to discuss the serious problem. The first suggested positioning an ambulance at the site, while another wondered whether, if there was to be an ambulance, there should possibly also be a clinic to treat the injured. And a third, who was most worried about his tires, suggested opening a tire shop.

European Union is to vote on labeling products manufactured in the Golan Heights and West Bank.  Israel's Foreign Ministry has begun all-out diplomatic efforts to try to stop the European Union from labeling of good and products manufactured in the Golan Heights and Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Israeli daily Haartez reported Sunday.