Daniel Shek
Daniel Shek is a former Israeli ambassador to Paris.[1]
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]
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]
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]
