Hat Tip — Life in Israel

Obama called Paletinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas first, what does this mean?

From TimesOnline:

President Obama placed the Middle East at the forefront of his first hours in office yesterday as he sought to make good on his promise of “ushering in a new era of peace”.

[...]

The spokesman for President Abbas revealed that Mr Obama had told the Palestinian leader that their conversation was his first with a foreign statesman since taking office. Mr Obama also spoke to President Mubarak of Egypt, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, and King Abdullah of Jordan.

Via: memeorandum

Photo: By Gerald Martineau — The Washington Post

Photo: IBD Editorials

ArutzSheva Reports:

Hamas: We Didn’t Expect it
Two captured terrorists interviewed by Maariv/NRG say that Hamas was not expecting Israel’s response to the escalation in missile attacks on Israeli targets that preceded Operation Cast Lead. One of them, a 52-year-old victim of a premature detonation who had already done time in an Israeli jail, said, “Hamas took a gamble. We thought, at worst Israel will come and do something from the air – something superficial. They’ll come in and go out. We never thought that we would reach the point where fear will swallow the heart and the feet will want to flee. You [Israel] are fighting like you fought in ‘48. What got into you all of a sudden?”

Via: memeorandum

Via: IsraellyCool

Pamela Geller reports on her blog about the rally today: 

The last minute, thrown together pro-Israel rally in NYC today was so packed, so overwhelming, they were turning Jews away. You could not get to the rally. The support parade was across from the Israel consulate between 42nd and 43rd. The police could not contain the throngs of happy, peaceful supporters and forced folks off 2nd Avenue. It was unbelievable.

I have been to all those Jew hating rallies, and they take over whole swaths of New York (this past weekend, for example) - they are given huge amounts of space, but the cops would not let us into the barricades. The Israel supporters were pouring into the streets. The young and the old – what a stark contrast from the haters’ demonstrations. Dark vs. light.

Here are some pictures from the rally courtesy of Dan Sieradski / Orthodox Anarchist

View the rest of the photos on the Flickr set here.

YouTube has restored unrestricted access to videos uploaded by the Israel Defense Forces.

Several of the videos, which were part of a public relations offensive and featured aerial footage of airstrikes on suspected Hamas targets, had been removed from the popular video sharing Web site after users flagged them as inappropriate content. For a time, several of the videos were placed behind an age-restriced firewall.

According to YouTube, which is owned by the Internet giant Google, the videos have been restored to full, unrestricted access. 

Via: @KosherX