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Netanyahu "Respectfully Declines" to Pen Op-ed for New York Times

(Jerusalem Post) Herb Keinon - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing to pen an op-ed piece for the New York Times, signaling the degree to which he is fed up with the influential newspaper's editorial policy on Israel. Netanyahu's senior adviser Ron Dermer made clear that this had much to do with the fact that 19 of the paper's 20 op-ed pieces on Israel since September were negative. Dermer's letter to the Times, saying that the prime minister would "respectfully decline," came a day after Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that the resounding ovation Netanyahu received in Congress when he spoke there in May had been "bought and paid for by the Israel lobby." Dermer wrote that "the opinions of some of your regular columnists regarding Israel are well known. They constantly distort the positions of our government and ignore the steps it has taken to advance peace. They cavalierly defame our country by suggesting that marginal phenomena condemned by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and virtually every Israeli official, somehow reflect government policy or Israeli society as a whole."
2011-12-16 00:00:00
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