Reporting live from Jerusalem

I’m on a whirliwind four-day, three-city tour of Israel as a guest of America’s Voices in Israel. It’s the first-ever bloggers tour sponsored by America’s Voices. My traveling companions include Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, Jeff Emanuel of Redstate and Jeff Emanuel, Andrew Breitbart of The Drudge Report, Breitbart and Breitbart TV, and Andrew’s attorney Larry Solov. Our host from America’s Voices is the lovely Fern Oppenheim.

The friendship between Andrew and Larry strikes a distant echo in my mind of the memorable friendship between Hunter Thompson and his attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Andrew and Larry have provided comic relief and spirted argument in addition to their own perspectives on issues addressed by our speakers.

It’s nearly midnight at the end of our only full day in Jerusalem, and it’s been an incredibly long and rewarding day. Among those we have met with since our arrival last night are the beloved Bridadier General (Reserve) Nachman Shai, foreign policy analyst Daniel Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, former Israeli Ambassador to Iran Uri Librani, Prime Minister Olmert’s spokesman Miri Eisen, Natan Sharansky and Michael Oren of the Shalem Center, and Azure assistant editor Noah Pollak. It has been an incredible privilege to meet with these prominent Israelis (and Noah, who is American) to explore the interests that brought us here. I should add that we also squeezed in visits to the Western Wall and Wall Tunnels this morning as well as Yad Vashem this afternoon.

I have tentative thoughts I would like to share on our meetings so far, but would like to save them until I have a little more energy to formulate them. Thanks to Fern’s unrelenting efforts, we have another full day tomorrow, including a brief meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. While I sleep on my thoughts, please check the sites of Jim Hoft and Jeff Emanuel for their reports and related material.

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