By Tal Schneider
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not given a single interview to the Israeli press since January 19, 2013. Not one question answered at a press conference, not a single one-on-one, and forget about a roundtable.
In a democracy, this is incomprehensible.
Amit Segal’s Channel 2 story on the matter (‘A year since the elections – the prime minister refuses to be interviews’, [Heb]) says it all. Nothing happened even after that.
Netanyahu grants numerous interviews in many languages to the foreign press — but not in Hebrew to Israeli reporters.
As a political blogger, I don’t even dream that I’d get a sit-down with Netanyahu but I would certainly try to ask the prime minister questions at press conferences — if only he would hold them.
So, I’m launching the Plog’s “Netanyahu Stop-Watch.”
I would like to call the attention of foreign press to the fact that in the “only democracy in the Middle East,” as Netanyahu described Israel again recently, the prime minister holds no press conferences and grants no interviews to the local media.
Perhaps my foreign colleagues, then, will ask him what he’s afraid of?
Tal Schneider is a political reporter. A version of this post first appeared on Tal’s blog, the Plog, and republished here with the her permission.
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