PM's office: Netanyahu was cheered, not jeered, at Broadway show

PMO denies reports that Netanyahu has booed upon entering a theater production in New York earlier in the week.

By HERB KEINON
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
The Prime Minister’s Office pushed back on Tuesday against reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was booed while entering a New York theater, releasing a video showing him being cheered instead.
The 14-second clip shows loud clapping and cheers for Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, by theatergoers at the Richard Rodgers Theater in Manhattan where they went on Saturday night to see the hit musical Hamilton.
Netanyahu acknowledged the applause with a wave, before taking his seat toward the front of the theater.
The New York Post reported on its “Page Six” gossip page on Sunday that Netanyahu was booed in the theater.
“Page Six is told that some in the crowd booed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he took his seat at the Broadway smash,” the paper wrote.
“‘The show started late because of his arrival – the heightened security slowed down seating,’ said a theatergoer,” according to the paper. “But he still entered and sat down before the lights went down, so everyone was focused on him. There was a lot of applause when he walked in, but definitely a few loud boos.”

Britain’s Daily Mail picked up on the story, and on Monday reported one woman as posting on Twitter that two women left the theater screaming “Free Palestine.”
Netanyahu, at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, said that Israel enjoys massive support among the American public, and this is something “I saw everywhere during my visit to the United States.”

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The prime minister made particular mention of one American, Matthew Sullivan, a UN security guard and former New York City policeman who greets him every year at the UN after his speech.
“He always gives me his opinion about the speech and he told me that it was an excellent speech, but that I have given a better one,” Netanyahu said. “I asked him which one was better, and he said the bomb speech was better. He said, ‘I am expressing here the general sense that United States citizens have in their massive support for the State of Israel.’”
Before mentioning that story in the cabinet, Netanyahu posted it and a picture of him shaking Sullivan’s hand on his Facebook page on Monday.