Israels PR method takes appropriate at unfamiliar media

Douglas Hamilton JERUSALEM Thu Feb 25, 2010 6:28am EST Related News War of Words: Israel attacks Palestinian rhetoricTue, Feb 23 2010Unhappy with Israel, EU condemns Dubai killingMon, Feb 22 2010Turkey offers to resume Israel-Syria mediationFri, Jan 29 2010Turkey offers to resume Israel-Syria mediationFri, Jan 29 2010

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - European correspondents reporting from Israel are depicted as stupid and condescending in video spoofs on a new government website created to help improve Israel"s image abroad.

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The lampoon of foreign media suggests Israel is regularly displayed to gullible European audiences by ignorant journalists as a very backward country, marked only by a propensity for war.

Israel is concerned that, after its offensive on the Gaza Strip last year, its image abroad is suffering. The main aim of the website is to offer tips to Israelis traveling abroad on how to correct common myths and misperceptions about their country.

Some members of the sizable foreign press corp here see it as a heavy-handed swipe that could turn public opinion even more against foreign media, who are seen as biased against Israel.

"We see this as a very worrisome development from the point of view of the Israeli authorities, which is not in the interest of the state of Israel and definitely not in the interest of the foreign journalists in Israel," said Conny Mus, chairman of the Jerusalem-based Foreign Press Association (FPA).

The FPA"s nearly 500 members were "already facing an unfriendly working atmosphere which does not fit with a democratic state," said Mus.

GOING OUT TO FIGHT PALESTINIANS

The satirical videos (at www.masbirim.co.il) do not address the issue many Israelis have with the foreign media -- its perceived pro-Palestinian slant.

Besides mocking foreign journalists, the clips imply that Europeans -- tens of thousands of whom fly in annually to enjoy Tel Aviv beaches, see the Holy Land, and do business here -- are ignorant enough to swallow any preposterous image of Israel.

In one short clip, a British TV reporter introduces the camel as a "typical Israeli animal, used by the Israelis to travel from place to place in the desert where they live".

"It is the means of transport for water, merchandise and ammunition. It is even used by the Israeli cavalry," he intones smugly, in a David Attenborough pose, atop a sand dune.

In a second clip, a breathless anchorwoman in a French TV studio has breaking news of "the sounds of war" in Israel.

"Our special envoys report shooting and heavy explosions across the country," she gasps, as Israel innocently celebrates its independence day with fireworks displays and fly-pasts.

A third shows an Israeli barbecue, where a bouncy Spanish TV reporter in riding breeches informs her audience: "Most Israeli homes don"t have electricity or gas, so they use ancient cooking methods, like meat roasted on charcoal".

Sampling a kebab, she purrs: "Mmm. Primitive but delicious."

The website is the work of the revamped Ministry of Hasbara, a Hebrew word meaning explanation or publicity.

"Are you fed up with how we are being presented in the world?" asks a voice after each clip. Israel is misunderstood, it says. But volunteers can help correct that by being image ambassadors, countering anti-Israel prejudice.

"Like any other campaign, this is a grotesque satire, and every citizen understands that it"s only satire," said Hasbara Minister Yuli Edelstein.

"No one I have talked to from the foreign press has told me they were offended by the clips," he told Reuters. "The clips are not about foreign correspondents or their audience. The aim is to give Israelis the tools to create a new atmosphere where Israel is not represented as the ultimate evil."

Edelstein said he was recently on a trip to London representing Israel and met British parliamentarians.

"I explained to them that when I have free time to take my wife out, I don"t take her out to fight the Palestinians."

(Additional reporting by Joseph Nasr; editing by Samia Nakhoul)

World

Revealed: David Camerons Obama Army ready to shift the face of the Conservative Party

New blue era: David Cameron with Davena Rankin, the Tory hope for Glasgow South

These are the 44 black, Asian and ethnic minority Tory candidates in the front line of David Camerons Election crusade to change the face of the Conservative Party for ever.

There are currently just two Tory MPs from ethnic minorities: millionaire businessman Adam Afriyie and Shadow Minister Shailesh Vara.

But if Mr Cameron wins power, that figure could rise tenfold in what one Tory official described as the ;Obama effect, in the wake of America electing its first black President.

Central Office has been encouraging local parties to choose candidates who are ;more representative of modern Britain.

As a result, it has been forecast that after the Election, the Tory backbenches could boast up to 19 ethnic members and as many as 80 women MPs, against 18 at present.

The latest ethnic candidate to be selected is Nadhim Zahawi, an Iraqi- born entrepreneur whose family fled Saddam Husseins regime.

He was chosen on Friday to contest the safe Conservative seat of Stratford-on-Avon.

However, the move towards more ethnic candidates has sparked a backlash from local parties who have accused the party leadership of shoehorning hand-picked ;Cameroon favourites into key seats.

The row has been further inflamed by the leak of a document that said the party should use ;stealth to ensure more women and ethnic candidates were chosen.

The blueprint, written by Shadow Schools Minister Michael Gove, said: ;Like a conjuror, well get more applause if the audience cannot see exactly how the trick is performed.

The document was seized on by grassroots activists who claim the leadership has deliberately tried to stop them choosing white male candidates.

"We have to look more like the best of modern Britain"

But one senior Tory aide said: ;We could not carry on presenting a line-up of largely male, middle-aged, white men in pin-striped suits.

The new candidates look much more like the country as a whole. If we want to represent modern Britain, we have to look and sound like the best of modern Britain.

Mr Goves document candidly admitted that the reason local parties often chose white males was ;because they tend to be the best people on offer.

It forecast fierce resistance from some local parties, but declared: ;Objections not only can be overcome, they MUST be overcome. The clever approach is to maintain the illusion that a good cross-section of approved candidates is being offered.

It has led cynics to claim that shortlists, which in the run-up to an Election are chosen by the party HQ, are crammed with women and ethnic minorities with a ;token local candidate who is usually white and male.

The local candidate rarely wins.

The "Obama Army"... David Cameron"s 44 candidates in line to change the face of the Conservative Party

Narrow cheep for a dozy dormouse

Home Staff & , : {}

A hibernating hazel dormouse is blissfully unknowingly that it has been discovered and rehomed after a gardener incidentally raked the nest out from underneath a sidestep nearby Leatherhead, Surrey.

David Williams, from Surrey Wildlife Trust, pronounced it competence have died of cold and would not have been means to find food. When it comes turn we will have certain it has got food and it is great to go.

The little animal can usually be hold for usually a couple of seconds since the carers warming hold would arise it prematurely.

Simon Cowell, owner of Wildlife Aid, said: We wish it to come out of hibernation at the own gait and are now monitoring it from a distance. When it comes turn we will have certain it has got food and is great to go.

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The hazel dormouse measures 6 to 9 centimetres (2.4 to 3.5 inches) in length and weighs seventeen to twenty grams (0.60 to 0.71 oz). This weight can stand in before to hibernation. It has golden-brown hair and large black eyes and is the usually dormouse local to the British Isles.

It is nightly and a stable species.

hair wig

British termite cluster earnings to North Devon

Simon de Bruxelles & , : {}

Britains usually cluster of termites has survived twelve years of attempts to clean it out utilizing chemicals, scientists have revealed. The termites, that can harm a residence by eating it, were thought to have been broken after an expulsion programme.

The wood-devouring insects were detected in 1998 in dual adjoining homes at Saunton in North Devon. Scientists hold they had been alien from the Canary Islands in a plant pot.

Since afterwards a 190,000 expulsion programme, saved by the Government, has attempted to clean out the cluster utilizing a accumulation of containing alkali weapons. They were thought to have been destroyed, but the ultimate consult of the site found justification of new infestation.

Under the programme, the area inside of a 500m radius of the dual houses was monitored, and an insect expansion regulator called hexaflumuron was ostensible to forestall the insects sappy so they would be incompetent to reproduce.

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Within dual years termite wake up in the properties appeared to be limited to a singular timber. The last pointer of the insects was available in Apr 2000.

In May 2001 monitoring inclination were marked down to an outdoor aegis section and dual months after all baits were removed. Since then, the group has carried out unchanging visits to safeguard that the termites have not returned.

An investigation in May last year found a couple of termites underneath a square chunk at Brackens, one of the houses. Plans for a serve revisit were done in Sep when termites were again found in dual some-more monitoring devices.

The inform pronounced that the resurgence of termite wake up appeared to be rarely localised.

The inform pronounced the people appeared to have avoided the growth-inhibitor treated with colour baits and might have been benefaction as a heavenly body mini-colony deeper in the ground, avoiding a fatal sip of the treatment.

This probability has regularly been supposed and is the elemental reason because a duration of ten years but termite wake up was deemed required prior to the programme could be deliberate complete.

The group is right away scheming a programme to understanding with the ultimate conflict and will take in to care any new report and experience around the world, given the strange programme was adopted.

Work is underneath approach to provide the outbreak.

hair wig

Chinese central held as diary of booze and women leaked online

Jane Macartney, Beijing & , : {}

Most officials in difficulty for crime in China do their most appropriate to cover their tracks. Han Feng, however, wrote a diary that supposing military investigators with a first-hand comment of his misdemeanours.

His Twitter-style, roughly every day diary entries over a two-year duration relate his passionate dalliances and the money gifts that he received, and have caused a prodigy given they were leaked on to the internet last month call an central exploration in to his activities. Mr Hans boasts about his passionate conquests and visit delight of banquets, karaoke and complicated celebration is an annoyance for the care on the eve of the annual event of Parliament, where the need to stamp out crime is approaching to be high on the agenda.

Netizens have been gripped by Mr Hans escapades, recounted in a disconcertingly impersonal tone. His entrance for Dec 31, 2007, epitomised his achievements over the prior twelve months: 2007 has been a great year. Work is going smoothly. Income is as high as 200,000 yuan (about �13,000). Womanising is on the right track. Its been a propitious year with women. I need to compensate courtesy to my health with so most sex partners.

Other entries are some-more graphic, detailing his passionate bravery in a singular night and the ease with that he can bed a mistress. As to personification women, Xiao Pan is hooked, Tan is unchanging and Mo is in the queue. Two alternative women are additionally mentioned.

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Scarcely a day goes by but Mr Han, right away dangling from his pursuit as arch of a internal bureau of the Tobacco Monopoly Bureau, feasting at a celebration and removing dipsomaniac with internal supervision officials, military or directors of tobacco companies. However, it is his vehement accounts in a diary of usurpation gifts, that he never approaching any one else to read, that are approaching to have sparked the exploration by supervision investigators.

On Jan 6, 2007, he says that he perceived 100,000 yuan. On Sep sixteen that year he wrote: Wang Shucheng asked me for lunch at the Guijing Hotel. There were only the dual of us. He gave me dual bottles of Moutai wine and 50,000 yuan. I deposited 30,000 yuan and took 20,000 home.

Mr Han was dangling on Feb twenty-two on guess of infringing celebration regulations and discipline. The bureau arch at the Guangxi Tobacco Monopoly Bureau said: The diaries are not illogical rumours.

It was not transparent how the diary found the approach online. One inform pronounced that a opposition of Mr Han found a hacker to raid his computer. A netizen who identified himself as Hanxianzi pronounced that he was the father of one of the women and had posted the diary as punish after anticipating it on a laptop .

The box outlines the ultimate example of an central being forced to step down after allegations of additional appeared on the internet. A housing central in the eastern city of Nanjing was locked up for eleven years after internet users posted photos of him pushing a Cadillac, smoking oppulance cigarettes and wearing a $14,000 watch.

The Kreutzer Sonata: Film examination Film The Guardian

Duet for 3 ... Elizabeth Röhm in The Kreutzer Sonata

British-born executive Bernard Rose, well known as a abhorrence dilettante for his 1992 shocker Candyman, is display a small overwhelming form with his complicated adaptations of Tolstoy. After a required comment of Anna Karenina, Rose brought off a shining version of The Death Of Ivan Ilych in 2000; set in complicated Hollywood, and entitled Ivansxtc, it starred Danny Huston as Ivan, the representative and Tinseltown power-player, opposed the horrible law about his coming death. Now Rose has blending Tolstoy"s romance The Kreutzer Sonata, again starring Huston, again set in � la mode Los Angeles. The outcome is bold, shining and exhilarating: an closely horrible, intimately pithy and black-comic mural of a poisonous matrimony that is closer to the suggestion of the strange than any series of dress dramas. It is not merely a investigate of possessiveness and obsession, but a profoundly desperate and nihilistic rejecting of regretful love and sex itself – which, in a universe but God, is the idealisation blasphemy.

The Kreutzer Sonata Production year: 2008 Country: USA Cert (UK): eighteen Runtime: 100 mins Directors: Bernard Rose Cast: Anjelica Huston, Danny Huston, Elisabeth Rohm, Julia Sandberg Hansson, Matthew Yang King More on this movie

Huston plays Edgar, a really abounding man in early center age, whose secular appeal and indulgence capture a lady he meets at a party: this is Abby (Elizabeth Röhm), a pleasing and gifted exemplary pianist, who is already in a relationship. Their passionate, surreptitious event leads years after to marriage, but Abby is discontented, carrying right away since up song for children. To damp her, Edgar induces his in isolation free substructure to host a good concert, so his mother will fool around Beethoven"s Kreutzer Sonata to a wealthy in isolation audience, but she contingency to illustrate rehearse prolonged hours with a large violinist: Aiden (Matthew Yang King).

Instantly, Edgar conceives a immoderate possessiveness – after all, did Abby not once lie on that former beloved to be with him? Yet he is neurotically constrained to let Abby be alone with the large newcomer, to infer to himself that he is not threatened, and so creates the scab he"s picking at. Abby is wholly innocent, but irritated and intimately antagonistic with Edgar, and additionally insists on progressing her sexual loyalty with Aiden, usually to infer to herself that she is a free agent. And so this neurotic, tainted incident metastises in Edgar"s mind.

In his novella, Tolstoy has a line about the ostensible joys of the honeymoon and conjugal tranquillity being similar to a fairground con-trick whose victims are as well abashed to confess they"ve been hoodwinked and so as well abashed to advise others – and to illustrate the fraud continues for eternity. In Rose"s movie, it is monogamous cognisance itself that is vilified by Edgar"s demented worldview. His wife"s necessary unknowability – in fact, the unknowability and uncontrollability of all outward his head – drives him mad.

The despondency and disregard additionally includes Beethoven and all exemplary music, that Edgar personally loathes: the important duet, so far from being a high assembly of spirits, is a clenched, ritualistic fight in balance with the assault and publishing of Edgar"s in isolation hell. Rose"s Kreutzer Sonata looks a small similar to Haneke"s The Piano Teacher, and bears some-more aged with Chantal Akerman"s version of Proust"s The Captive – but is freer and some-more uninhibited. My usually advance booking is with Rose"s make use of of voiceover narration, that is, perhaps, a small pedantic. But it doesn"t stop this from being a well beautiful adaptation.

Euro millions for Arsenal and Arsene Wenger Arsenal

Nick Harris & , : {}

ARSENALS expansive mercantile on all sides underlined by half-yearly total that show debt plummeting and enlarge up will concede them to contest with Europes vital spenders for tip players this summer, according to sources with believe of the clubs finances. Arsenal are notoriously demure to speak up their spending energy and Arsène Wenger claimed progressing this month they cannot equates to to follow a process that involves both high transfers and high wages.

But a source with minute inside inform said: If Wenger wants to pointer dual �20m players on �80,000 per week each this summer, he has the equates to to do so. Arsenals burgeoning standing as one of the Europes vital monetary players will be underlined this week when accountants Deloitte Touche recover their annual examination of the continents richest clubs.

It will show that Real Madrid are still top, with income of �347.9m in 2008-09, forward of Barcelona (�312m), Manchester United (�278.5m) and Bayern Munich (�230m). Then comes the majority poignant move inside of the English game, with Arsenal (�225.1m) up to fifth, overtaking Chelsea, who have additionally depressed subsequent Juventus and are scrapping to keep gait with others, Milan included.

Arsenals on all sides has strengthened even given the recover of total for 2008-09 on that Deloittes inform is based. Their half-yearly numbers show debts have depressed by roughly �100m to �203.6m, and they done �35.2m in pre-tax half-year profits.

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Cash pot have additionally increasing by �25m to �100m and whilst a little of that is earmarked for ongoing debt repayments, there is a big pool for the summer, if Wenger wants to spend, a source said. The clubs non-executive chairman, Peter Hill-Wood, wrote in his half-year inform that the subsequent integrate of years will see the skill activities delivering over-abundance money but combined he wouldnt assume on the design quantum. Insiders design property-related loans outset from redeveloping Highbury Square to be privileged this year (from �12.9m), and that the over-abundance from sales will be around �50m over dual years. Much of this should go to Wenger for players fees or wages.

Insiders are additionally sure that Arsenal will pointer Bordeaux striker Marouane Chamakh, 26, on a free send this summer. Arsenal had an �8m suggest deserted last year but crop up to have knocked about off foe from rivals Liverpool for his signature. The Morocco general will stick on a patrol in that seventeen players, together with Theo Walcott and Robin outpost Persie, have not long ago sealed softened contracts. These deals have led to a 17% enlarge in the half-year salary bill, to about �58m, but the long-term design is rosy.

Education: the high fly the rest sink. And no one acts George Walden

George Walden & , : {}

On the control of wars the domestic parties can disagree, on the economy they can fake to, but on a key theme for Britains destiny preference in preparation a swindling of overpower reigns, that as the choosing approaches will turn deafening.

For thirteen years new Labour, to this day an roughly religiously anti-selection party, has presided over the downgrading of the tutorial expectations of the lowest in society, the multiplying of the highest, and the annihilation of foe in in between the two. Hence, in large part, the extraordinary shelter of meritocracy in Britain compared with pick countries: an LSE inform in 2005 showed that in the past thirty years we had left in to reverse, often for tutorial reasons.

It is not about money. Under the hardline, anti-selection Ed Balls the larger the output on preparation the wider the good order in in between state and private. Labour stays highly-strung about amicable class, and certain sufficient the infancy new hearing sum are a mimic of their category connotations: eccentric schools 7 per cent of sum pupils scored 11,500 loyal As opposite a trifling 9,725 sixth formers in comprehensives.

What will occur when the initial starred As are published after this year? I think we know who will get the lions share. The outcome will no disbelief be even some-more anguished contortions in university acknowledgment procedures, to equivocate the annoyance of as well majority starred pupils removing the majority appropriate university places. Only in Britain ...

BACKGROUNDClarke to magnify plan for resourceful state schoolsSelective relatives exclude to let abbreviation schools go in to historyFlagship academies unwell to encounter GCSE targetsClass and income in extensive schools

The incident would be less abominable if Labours gone beliefs were underneath challenge, but the Conservatives go along with it, and the Lib-Dems you can once again forget. The subject the Tories never answer is how the eccentric schools they mostly patronize can be resourceful in each clarity academically, financially, socially whilst the celebration care abhors preference for people who do not have the cash?

Who would have thought that Conservatives would scowl on those pretender abbreviation schools a personal bugbear of Cameron it seems as entrenching advantage, in the ill-chosen difference of David Willetts. From a celebration with no critique to have of relatives who send their young kids to in isolation schools (and nor should it), that is a word to be rolled around the tongue.

Meanwhile, all parties cooperate in masking the loyal on all sides on university admissions, that is worse than people think. In Oxbridge they think something over 40 per cent are from the 7 per cent of in isolation schools intolerable enough. But if you embody resourceful grammars (in well off areas, by and large) to one side resourceful independents, the 2008 figure is 63 per cent selective. The underperformance of the comprehensives, a little 90 per cent of the system, in Oxbridge as elsewhere is tragic.

In Britain any plead on preference is cut off at the knees prior to it starts: eleven plus, a lapse to old-style grammars and essay off as failures is all you need to say. No critical chairman proposes any of this. Sir Eric Anderson, former Provost of Eton and coach to Blair and Cameron, says that the plead should not be about the 11-plus and either or not to select, but how to do it. It could be after than 11, it does not have to be in apart schools, though that should be an option, given inhabitant standardisation introduces strictness mortis in to the system.

The British non-debate on preference is insular, ignorant, category ridden, highly-strung and to the nth grade hypocritical, generally in the tip reaches. The Sutton Trusts inform on preference in pick tools of the world, due at the finish of the year, will help. It exists in assorted forms flattering majority everywhere. There are worldly systems in France and Germany, where it takes place at 14, and those who dont have the Gymnasium (grammar schools) might have to calm themselves with being doctors or well-paid engineers.

The Indians and the Chinese generally have no qualms about selecting the majority appropriate matched to sold lines of study. In India vocational importance starts at 14, in China higher technical schools begin at 15. With the talents of hundreds of millions to pull on, in time these countries will surpass us in margin after field. We contingency goal that desirous immigrants will increasingly plea their host countrys phlegmatic and shy assumptions about how, but bid or distinction, or being drawn in to the unsympathetic on all sides of usurpation that one chairman can be some-more able in a little ways than another, someway the Brits will regularly come out on top.

Though maybe the British box is hopeless? It might be that inbred informative factors are at work, a impolite amicable alertness that leads the British to think it normal that the tip reaches of multitude should be scholastic according to one speculation of education, with conspicuous success it seems, whilst the non-affluent infancy should be calm to follow a manifestly defective system. Where else in the grown universe are dual methods of hearing developing, flattering majority but comment, one mostly the safety of monnied folk the International Baccalaureate and a less perfectionist one for the rest?

Proof that the egalitarian examination has run the march is mounting, but no one seems ready to anticipate pick systems. Rather than face up to fundamentals, gimcrack ideas are alien from countries with a race not as big than London. Meanwhile, all the celebration leaders and infancy heading domestic sum were selectively or exclusively educated. Not their choice, of course, but it seems to have served them well, and I dont see majority of them promulgation their own young kids to the new, non-selective internal city academy.

The enlightenment of anti-intellectualism fostered by an egalitarian complement equates to that it is no longer probable to plead anything majority but possibility to celebrity. The clinching evidence in foster of a complement that gives the non-advantaged a possibility opposite the rest must, therefore, be that an augmenting series of the cocktail stars, comedians, actors and sportsmen and women are secretly (ie, selectively) educated.

Britains got talent, the TV programme tells us, and I think it has, but we wouldnt go far whilst preference can usually work on TV shows.

George Walden was Minister for Higher Education from 1985-87