The deputy chief spokesman of the Foreign Ministry, Binyamin Avileah, has been named to a new post in New York heading the Israeli information center there. He will head liaison work with all the major international organizations headquartered in New York, among them the leading Jewish organizations.
This new post is being set up with urgency in view of Israel’s sagging popularity in the U.S. Until now the responsibility of overseeing liaison with the national organizations was part of the work of the information minister at the Washington Embassy. But Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan apparently believes the area is sufficiently important to have a senior diplomat devote himself to it entirely. Avileah will be given the personal diplomatic rank of minister and will be formally attached either to the Washington Embassy or to the United Nations Israeli Mission.
He served in New York as a Consul General in the early seventies, and for the past four years he has been deputy spokesman at the Foreign Ministry. In the view of many leading foreign and local correspondents, Avileah achieved rare success in this difficult and sensitive job. An indicator of the respect and popularity which he has enjoyed is the invariably large turnout of top foreign correspondents to his daily news briefings.
Avileah’s wife, Ruth, is a public relations officer for the Jerusalem Hilton and is also a popular figure in Jerusalem journalistic and political circles.
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