Daybreak: Bibi Opposes Conversion Bill

• Prime Minister Netanyahu came out against the so-called Rotem Bill, which would place Israeli conversions in the power of a small coterie of ultra-Orthodox rabbis. [JTA]

• Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (who is probably dying) said he supports direct Israeli-Palestinian talks following his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. [WP]

• Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top foreign policy figure, visited Gaza and called for the territory to be opened further. [NYT]

• Thomas Friedman writes that the Mideast is a complicated place, in which the brief mourning of a figure with truly troubling ties is not necessarily a display of wrong-headedness. [NYT]

• Jean-Louis Bruguière, a world terrorism expert, reminded Israelis that back in 1996 he had reported that IHH, the charity behind the Gaza flotilla, was itself a terrorist organization. [Haaretz]

• Journalist David Twersky, who spent a good deal of his career at the Forward, died at 60. Tablet Magazine contributing editor Seth Lipsky’s New York Sun, which maintains a Website, has an obit worth reading. [JTA]