Israeli advert re-enacts Dubai assassination

Wed Mar 10 2010 22:46:19

An Israeli ad agency has re-enacted the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai in a commercial aimed at promoting the "shooting down" of prices.

Actors dressed up as members of a hit squad roamed through the supermarket equipped with CCTV cameras which traced their every move, evoking images from footage released by Dubai police after the January assassination of senior Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Dubai's police chief had said last month that he believed Israeli agents were responsible for killing al-Mabhouh, and called for the Mossad spy agency's chief to be arrested if its responsibility was proved.

Sefi Shaked, the commercial's copy writer, said the Tel Aviv-based Bar-Merhav-Shaked advertising agency sought a creative storyline to promote special sales for the coming Jewish holiday of Passover.

"In the last month the whole world is watching surveillance cameras and the whole world is talking about what happened, especially here in Israel, and the idea here is to stand out, using this thing against all the other brands that are advertising massively with bigger accounts than ours, and this is kind of a funny provocation," Shaked said during the shoot of the advertisement in a suburb in central Israel.

The upcoming televised advertisement to promote the grocery store and retail chain "Mahsaney Kimat Hinam" ("Almost Free Warehouses") is scheduled to be launched early next week.

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