A senior Israeli official refuted claims by New York Times analyst Thomas Friedman that US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Netanyahu to halt judicial reform legislation during a phone call this week, according to a report by Yanir Cozin. Friedman claims he was invited by the president to the Oval Office on Tuesday to "make sure that Biden’s position is crystal clear to all Israelis." "His message to the Israeli prime minister and President could not have been clearer: Please stop now. Don’t pass anything this important without a broad consensus, or you are going to break something with Israel’s democracy and with your relationship with America’s democracy, and you may never be able to get it back," the analyst wrote in a New York Times opinion column on Wednesday. Kan News reported that sources that know the details of Monday's phone conversation between the two leaders claimed that the judicial reform was only brought up marginally and momentarily. Netanyahu told Biden that after passing the bill to reduce the reasonableness standard and during the summer recess, he will attempt to reach "a wide consensus" on the other issues.
