Las Vegas business magnate pens 'Post' op-ed downplaying influence: Olmert credits me with power I simply don't have.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFSheldon Adelson 370(photo credit: Reuters)
Las Vegas business magnate Sheldon Adelson has called former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s claim that he manipulated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to advance the election of Mitt Romney as US president “absurd.”In a meeting with American Jewish leaders last week, Olmert charged that Netanyahu “intervened in the US elections in the name of an American billionaire with a clear interest in the vote,” and that the “very same billionaire used Israel’s prime minister to advance a nominee of his own for president.”Adelson, who owns the Israel HaYom daily, was a major donor to Romney’s campaign and is a friend of Netanyahu, writes in an op-ed in today’s Jerusalem Post that Olmert “is crediting me with a degree of power that I simply don’t have."“The prime minister of Israel is very much his own man. I can also attest that Bibi has always maintained a neutral position vis-à-vis the US presidential election, as would any sensible Israeli leader.”Click here for special JPost coverage
