U.S. Liberal Bloggers Brought to Israel to Show Them "Reality"

from YNetNews.com, April 4, 2008

Left-wing U.S. bloggers, including Daily Kos editor David Waldman and former Moveon.org lobbyist Tom Matzzie, who now heads Campaign to Defend America, will spend six days in Israel as the guests of the Israeli government. The trip is sponsored and organized by the Solomon Project. The bloggers will "meet with Israeli bloggers, journalists and Knesset officials." According to author Yitzhak Benhorin, "The Foreign Affairs Ministry has long since been exerting considerable efforts to bring the prominent writers for an extensive tour of the country, in recognizing the influence many of the writers wield and the fact some of them represent websites that are less-than-friendly towards the Israel." The bloggers will receive briefings on Israel's perception of the security situation and will tour the area between Gaza and the West Bank, known as Israel's "narrow waistline," with the objective of communicating the "true meaning of a return to the borders of June 4th 1967." The borders referred to are spelled out in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 which calls for Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, and were the basis of the Oslo process. The guests may also meet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni.