02 March 2007

Israeli Hasbara - a short sequel

You are not tired yet of reading about shenanigans of Israeli Hasbara people, I hope? So here comes another one:

Israel is considered one of the world's leading arms exporters, but now it turns out that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has found a new export market: the sale of videos. Gil Yeshua, the owner of a production company representing foreign television companies, recently discovered this industry's existence while preparing a report for one of the large TV stations in Japan. He approached the IDF Spokesman's Office with a routine request for a collection of 12 minutes of archival footage of fighter jets and armored vehicles in action.
...
The head of the IDF Spokesman's archive department, Inbar Reich, reviewed the request and approved the provision of the material. To receive the goods, however, Yeshua was asked to go to the billing department at the Defense Ministry's publishing house and drop off a check for NIS 13,302.
There is more in the article, however I think that the defense ministry should be applauded for this brilliant decision. After all, the whole PR in Israel is one disaster area, so at least it should show some revenues of top of all the shame.

And of course, some of the video clips should be offered at premium prices to connoisseurs of the comedy genre. Since we know that our defense minister is fully appreciative of the value of a good stand up performance, the decision to charge for purely military material should be augmented by a special price list for appearances of the ministry officials. The same goes for the IDF spokesman interviews that in any case were never regarded by the journalists as anything but comedy...

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