Ex-worker says she was warned to drop suit against Sara Netanyahu

A former worker at the Prime Minister’s Residence reportedly alleged she was threatened to drop an abuse lawsuit against Sara Netanyahu by an adviser to the prime minister.

The NIS 225,000 ($64,000) lawsuit, which was filed by a 24-year-old ultra-Orthodox mother of three, who recently worked as a cleaner at the residence for a month, details how the prime minister’s wife allegedly insulted the young staffer relentlessly throughout her short tenure at the residence in Jerusalem.

The lawsuit says Rivka Paluch, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aide for ultra-Orthodox affairs, was aware of the alleged abuse and reached out to the former worker when she left the job, according to a report Monday by the Ynet news site.

Sounding “shocked” about the “mess,” Paluch asked to meet with the complainant to try and find her another job, saying it was “painful” to hear the woman was not working.

But when Paluch met with the former staffer and her husband, they refused to provide her with details of the alleged abuse, and Paluch spoke harshly to the  two, the suit alleged.

A few days later, Paluch again reached out to the ex-worker and allegedly threatened her, asking to know “unnecessary details about [the couple’s] lifestyle, such as ‘who is your rabbi,’ ‘which community do you belong to,’ ‘what synagogue does your husband pray in.'”

The complainant refused to respond, however, as “she understood exactly what was behind those questions,” the lawsuit says, according to Ynet, apparently alluding to the possibility that pressure would be brought to bear on others so that they would in turn pressure her.

In light of the former staffer’s refusal to speak, the lawsuit says Paluch again contacted her and was “angry with the complainant and yelled at her.” After she told Paluch she was “in distress” and asking not to be threatened, the aide to the prime minister agreed and said she would soon reach out to her in order “to arrange” another job.

The lawsuit says that while the complainant was then contacted by senior officials in the public sector about setting up a job interview, the contact ceased after she hired a lawyer.

Paluch denied the allegations to Ynet.

Separately, an adviser to the lawyers representing the complainant denied wrongdoing following the publication on Sunday of text messages in which he offered a central witness in the case the job of aide to a PR firm’s CEO, in an apparent attempt to entice her to testify against the prime minister’s wife.

“I didn’t obstruct the investigation; it’s all legal,” Arik Rosenthal told Channel 2 news on Monday. “This is spin by the Prime Minister’s Office.”

A spokesman for the Netanyahu family on Sunday had said the text messages showed the suit was a “farce” meant to “tarnish Sara Netanyahu and harm the prime minister.”

“Who would offer, via a text message, a job of CEO’s aide to someone they had never met, who by chance is a central witness?” the Netanyahus’ statement asked. “This text message reveals the entire farce.”

On Sunday, police took testimony from the former worker regarding her complaints, and also probed other witnesses in order to corroborate her story.

The lawsuit charges that during the staffer’s initial job interview with Sara Netanyahu, she was asked if she owned a car because arriving late would be “the end of the world” from her boss’s perspective. In addition, Netanyahu told the prospective cleaner that she liked workers who “run.”

“That’s why I don’t hire fat women,” the premier’s wife allegedly said.

Among the former employee’s complaints were not being allowed to take leave when one of her children was sick, and being forced to use the bathroom outside the main building.

She also claimed that the prime minister’s oldest son, Yair Netanyahu, would conduct cleanliness inspections.

The name of the former employee has not yet been released for publication. However, breaking protocol aimed at protecting witnesses and those filing police complaints, Likud MK David Amsalem revealed the name of the ex-staffer to Channel 2 on Saturday night, saying she was part of a “witch hunt” against the Netanyahu family and shouldn’t remain anonymous.

The Likud lawmaker was widely panned for naming the complainant, including by the ex-employee’s lawyer, who responded by publishing Amsalem’s personal phone number on Facebook.

Several former employees have claimed mistreatment by the prime minister’s wife. One, Menny Naftali, a former caretaker at the residence, was awarded NIS 170,000 compensation (about $43,735) last year for mistreatment while working at the Jerusalem mansion.

The Netanyahus deny any wrongdoing, dismissing allegations as a political witch hunt by hostile media.

In the suit, the lawyers said that because the woman was ultra-Orthodox, she does not watch TV or listen to the radio, so she was unaware of the previous allegations surrounding Sara Netanyahu.