Mark Regev: Israel’s spokesman for war

Who is Mark Regev, the hard-as-steel spokesman for Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, who’s popping up on British TV and radio every five minutes to defend Israel’s action in Gaza? It’s a question being asked by viewers and TV professionals alike. Try as he might, even Jeremy Paxman was unable to dent Regev’s armour as he tried again and again on Newsnight on Tuesday to persuade the PR man that firing missiles into a UN-run school filled with civilians was a bad thing.

It seems Regev (pictured), still in his 30s, has been around longer than we think. He was appointed Olmert’s foreign press and public affairs adviser in 2007, having served time with Israel's Foreign Ministry and as a spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, where he is said to have accumulated an impressive range of contacts in Capitol Hill and in the US media.

He was born Mark Freiberg in Australia, but became an Israeli citizen after emigrating there in the 1990s. His academic CV is impressive. He took a BA in history and political science at Melbourne University and holds MAs in political science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in management from Boston University. Before venturing into PR, he taught international relations and strategy at the Israel Defence Forces' staff college.

A friend, Joel Leyden, from the Israel News Agency, says he is "not a bureaucrat, rather a finely tuned and dedicated PR professional" who can "easily take down anyone who tries to spin him or the State of Israel". And he can spit out "effective and potent sound-bites without sleep".