Difference between revisions of "Daniel Shek"
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==Politics== | ==Politics== | ||
| − | + | A December 2011 ''Haaretz'' profile reported that Shek was a member of [[Kadima]]<ref name="HaaretzProfile">Aviva Lori, [http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/former-israeli-ambassador-speaks-his-mind-about-his-boss-avigdor-lieberman-1.401828 Former Israeli ambassador speaks his mind about his boss, Avigdor Lieberman], ''Haaretz'', 16 December 2011.</ref> A few weeks earlier, ''TheJC.com'' reported rumours that he was interested in seeking a Knesset seat for the party.<ref>Simon Rocker, [http://www.thejc.com/news/the-diary/58919/shek-knesset Shek for the knesset?], thejc.com, 24 November 2011.</ref> | |
==On Hasbara== | ==On Hasbara== | ||
Revision as of 13:34, 9 August 2012
Daniel Shek is a former Israeli ambassador to Paris.[1]
Contents
Background
Shek's parents were orginally from Prague, where they met in the Theresienstadt ghetto during the Nazi occupation. His father, Zeev Shek, was a personal secretary of Israeli foreign minister Moshe Sharett, and one of Israel's first diplomats.[1]
Military service
Shek served as a photographer in IDF military intelligence.[1]
Early diplomatic career
After studing general history and French literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, worked at the Israeli embassy in Brussels for a year. He was subsequently accepted into the Foreign Ministry cadet's course in 1984.[1]
Shek went on to work in the office of Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, before serving as press officer at the Israeli embassy in Paris. He returned in 1994 as Foreign Ministry spokesman and director of the press department. In 1997 he was appointed consul general for the US Pacific Northwest based in San Francisco. Three years later he returned to Israel as director of the department responsible for Western Europe.[1]
BICOM
In 2004, Shek took a three-year unpaid leave of absence from the Foreign Ministry, and took up a position as director of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Center in London.[1]
Paris Ambassador
After two years in London, accepted the post of Ambassador to France from Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.[1]
In 2009, Shek was present at a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at which Sarkozy strongly criticized Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Netanyahu ordered Shek not to tell Lieberman about the remarks, a fact which angered Lieberman when he learned of it through a leak.[1]
Shek was critical of Lieberman for say at an ambassadors conference in 2009, that the Foreign Ministry should not deal with the peace process:
- "I'm the second generation in this profession - my father [Zeev Shek] belonged to the generation of diplomats who only dreamed of making peace with our neighbors; they understood that this was the mission of Israeli diplomacy. That is the meta-idea of diplomacy: to improve relations between countries, and not to spoil them. How can you say the Foreign Ministry doesn't have to deal with that?[1]
Politics
A December 2011 Haaretz profile reported that Shek was a member of Kadima[1] A few weeks earlier, TheJC.com reported rumours that he was interested in seeking a Knesset seat for the party.[2]
On Hasbara
Shek told Haaretz in December 2011 that expectations of what 'hasbara' or public relations can achieve are inflated in Israel:
- "To a great extent that's true. In every conflict, there has always been a military and a diplomatic dimension. In both of these dimensions, it is clear who is victorious: the one who is stronger. In the third dimension, the battle for public opinion, it's the opposite: The strong one always loses, and the Palestinians use the third dimension, and rightly so. There's no hasbara in the world that can explain away an Israeli tank confronting a fighter with a Kalashnikov rifle who is standing in a street with an open sewer, in a refugee camp in Jabalya."[1]
