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Justin Bieber Disputes Reports About Meeting With Israeli Prime Minister

Combine a teen singing sensation and Mideast politics and you get a media feeding frenzy.

News outlets in Israel are reporting that pop idol Justin Bieber was supposed to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem today — but isn't because of a disagreement over whether Israeli children who live in places that have been hit by rockets fired from Palestinian territory in the Gaza strip could also attend.

The word from Israel's Channel Two network, which has been repeated by Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post and other outlets, is that it was the Bieber camp that didn't want the meeting to include those children.

But The Associated Press reports that "Bieber spokesman Scooter Brown says a meeting was never pursued."

Bieber is in Israel to perform a concert on Thursday. A frequent poster on Twitter, he's on this news:

"i want to see this country and all the places ive dreamed of and whether its the paps or being pulled into politics its been frustrating"

"Paps" would be a reference to the paparazzi.

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.