The growing bloodshed in Iraq and Syria is being watched as keenly in China as anywhere else in the world. Indeed, the greater Middle East is becoming an ever greater focus of Chinese foreign policy.

“Fashion connects all people,” said Mr. Drori, who interned at Azzedine Alaïa in Paris and Donna Karan in New York before returning to start Colle’cte. “It can be a bridge across color and religion.”

Someone once told me that in Gaza “things are never so bad that they can’t get worse.” Those words came back when I read that the Israeli prime minister has told his military “to take the gloves off” to stop the rocket fire from Gaza.

I’m sitting in a café in Jerusalem’s posh German Colony, an area of town reminiscent of Boston’s Newbury Street, on a lovely, if a touch excessively warm, summer Friday morning. As I’ve been here for a month doing archival research for my next book, Cast a Giant Shadow: Israel’s Image-Making efforts in America 1948-78, I’m thinking a lot about nation branding. But at the moment, I’m thinking less about Israel’s image and “brand” in the U.S. than I am about Palestine’s.

In the wake of its military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, Russia is widely disliked in Europe, the Middle East and the United States, according to a Pew Global Attitudes poll released on Wednesday. The leadership of President Vladimir V. Putininspires little confidence, the survey found.

As ISIS make gains in Iraq and declare an Islamic caliphate, media activists embedded along the front lines and their global support networks, the media mujahedeen, valorize their achievements in HD video and Hollywood film style posters which are distributed via social media.