Israel ambassador is latest shoe-throwing target

[LahoreEstate]

Israel ambassador is latest shoe-throwing target

Friday, February 06, 2009
STOCKHOLM: Israel’s ambassador to Sweden has become the latest public figure to be targeted by a shoe-throwing protester.

Stockholm University officials said someone attending a student gathering called this week to hear Israeli Ambassador Benny Dagan explain Israel’s forthcoming election hurled a shoe at him.

“During this seminar, someone threw a shoe at the ambassador,” university spokeswoman Maria Sandqvist said. “It was a student organisation that had an event and they had invited the ambassador to talk about the upcoming election in Israel.”

A police official confirmed an incident had taken place at the university but had no immediate details. Dagan himself and officials at the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm could not be reached for comment.

Last December, an Iraqi journalist hurled both shoes at former US president George W Bush when he was on a farewell visit to Iraq in December. Then last Monday a protester threw a shoe at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during a speech at Cambridge University in England. The Foreign Policies Association student group in Stockholm issued a statement on its web site deploring the incident.

“Violence is never a solution,” it said. A video posted on the Internet purporting to depict the event showed objects being hurled across a lecture hall towards a group of people at the front, who then hurried out of the room. A part of the video was blacked out and it was not possible to see who had hurled the objects.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=161022