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Daybreak: Memorial Day Finds Tourists, Uncharacteristic Frankness in Israel

Plus Blair stranded, books in Italy, and more in the news

by
Hadara Graubart
April 19, 2010

• European tourists stranded in Israel by the volcanic ash cloud had “an opportunity to witness the most Israeli day of the year—Memorial Day.” [Ynet]

• For former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, however, being stuck in Jerusalem is a disruption to his schedule of campaigning for his successor Gordon Brown. [AFP]

• Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak took the national holiday as an occasion for frankness, saying that Israelis “shouldn’t delude ourselves”: “The growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for the state of Israel…The world isn’t willing to accept—and we won’t change that in 2010—the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades more.” [AP]

• On Saturday night, the first Jewish book fair in Italy opened in Ferrara, the city that will host the future Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah. [JTA]

• A nuclear conference in Iran concluded with a statement demanding that “the Zionist regime” join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. [AP]

Hadara Graubart was formerly a writer and editor for Tablet Magazine.