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- Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has stated that Europe will not dictate policy to Israel. That is the USA’s job.
- Rumours of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s invitation to visit Egypt may have been exaggerated.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
9:48AM: Israeli PM spokesperson Mark Regev admits that naming Israel’s incursion into Gaza Operation Cast Lead was a public relations mistake.
“I didn’t like the name,” Mark Regev, the prime minister’s spokesman for international media, told a crowd of some 150 listeners in English. “From a public relations point of view, it was a mistake.”
Regev, who immigrated to Israel from Australia in 1982, said at the Modi’in municipality, “The Israel Defense Forces chooses its names by some computer or by some system which I don’t understand. And the truth is that the Hebrew name Oferet Yetzuka [referring to Hanukkah dreidels] sounds lovely. It’s the translation into English which sounds inappropriate.”
Regev, 49, added that whenever he spoke to international media, he “never once said ‘Cast Lead’ because it has connotations in English that are problematic,” opting instead for “the Gaza Operation” to describe the attack, which came in response to rocket fire from Gaza aimed at Israeli civilians.
9:40AM: Yet another palestinian press conference that doesn’t look like much fun.
6:03AM: The city of Miami, Florida has bestowed honorary citizenship on kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, following in the footsteps of Paris and Rome.
