“I’m proud to see Playboy Israel embark on its mission to play an important role in strengthening freedom of speech, freedom of choice and freedom of the press,” Playboy founder Hugh Hefner said in a message prerecorded for the magazine’s Tuesday launch party at the Brown Hotel in Tel Aviv, which aptly features a blown-up Playboy cover from April 1970 featuring “the girls of Israel,” as part of its regular decor. “I am equally pleased that so many of the core values of the magazine are also the core values of the country and the society that has so graciously invited us to be a part of its cultural landscape,” he said. http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=305370