PM's new man may be too hot to handle

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo / AP

Just a few days before he heads to Washington to try to mend fences with the White House and secure billions of dollars in United States military aid, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed a new chief of public diplomacy who called President Obama a modern-day anti-Semite and wrote that Secretary of State John Kerry has the intellectual acuity of a 12-year-old.

Netanyahu's choice of Ran Baratz was pounced on by Israeli news media and the political opposition, which quickly combed through his social media posts and past articles to find a string of provocative opinions that were anything but diplomatic.

Israelis joked that Baratz didn't heed the advice given to college graduates to scrub their Facebook pages before sending out resumes.

Unless he is fired before he is officially hired, which Netanyahu hinted is a distinct possibility, Baratz will serve as the Prime Minister's media adviser and director of public diplomacy, a position far more central and intimate than mere spokesman: The person is tasked with shaping and selling Netanyahu's policies at home and abroad.

Netanyahu is to meet Obama on Tuesday. He will discuss the outlines of a new 10-year package of US military aid, worth billions of dollars.

Baratz, 42, is known as a tart-tongued pro-Israel brawler who started a conservative online magazine called MIDA.

He earned a PhD in philosophy from Hebrew University, did his military duty in air force intelligence and lives in the Jewish settlement of Kfar Adumim in the West Bank.

As chief of public diplomacy - known in Hebrew as "hasbara", or "explanation" - Baratz will join Israel's top diplomats, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely and Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon, as the face of Israel on the world stage.

Hotovely and Danon are hardliners who oppose the creation of a Palestinian state; last week, Hotovely said she dreamed of raising an Israeli flag over the esplanade on which al-Aqsa Mosque stands in Jerusalem's Old City.

The Baratz post about Obama came after the President criticised Netanyahu's appearance in Congress, where he spoke in opposition to the Iran nuclear pact.

"Looks like a modern anti-Semitism disguised as Western liberalism," Baratz said.

"It comes of course with lots of tolerance and understanding of Islamic anti-Semitism; so much tolerance and understanding that they are willing to give them the atom." He later apologised.

Netanyahu said he had only now read the Baratz posts, which he called "totally unacceptable", but left the fate of his chief of public diplomacy unclear.