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

Left-wing U.S. bloggers, including Daily Kos editor David Waldman and former Moveon.org lobbyist Tom Matzzie, who now heads the 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," reports 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 (sic) 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," to illustrate the "true meaning of a return to the borders of June 4th 1967." These borders 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 bloggers may also meet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni.