They came, they swam, they left
In Israel's 52nd year, the rich, famous, and obscure came to visit. Here are our 52 top distinguished tourists

33. Peter Hain
In one of the most extreme reversals of position on Israel, British Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain, who once attacked Israelis as "greedy oppressors," and described Israel as "racist," was all charm and smiles on his official visit here in March. It was quite different from his visit in the early 1970s when he visited the West Bank as a guest of a pro-Arab British lobby, boasting afterward that he had not met any Israelis. It was assumed that it was Prime Minister Tony Blair himself who warned Hain not to rock the boat when it came to British-Israeli relations.