Payout for worker who said Sara Netanyahu threw tomatoes and olives at her – reports

Employee says the premier’s wife shouted and threw food when salad wasn’t to her liking; prime minister said to have been present at time of incident

An employment agency paid tens of thousands of shekels in compensation to a worker who said that Sara Netanyahu, the prime minister’s wife, threw tomatoes and olives at her and disparaged her on a number of occasions, Hebrew-language media reported Monday.

The compensation payout was made after the employee filed suit in the Jerusalem Labor Court against the state and the employment agency, claiming that the premier’s wife humiliated her on several occasions during her two years working in the Prime Minister’s Office cafeteria, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

According to the employee, referred to only by the Hebrew letter Shin, on one occasion she served breakfast to Sara Netanyahu and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s Office, but Sara was not satisfied with the salad, saying it had too much tomato, olive and onion.

The prime minister’s wife then threw pieces of tomatoes and olives at the employee.

According to Channel 12, which first reported the allegations last month, the premier was present as his wife threw the food.

The employee said that the food hit her in the chest area, soiling her clothes, and that she fled the room in tears before being comforted by her managers.

Shin also alleged that Sara Netanyahu shouted at her with the prime minister present and accused the employee of disliking the premier and seeking to harm the couple.

A confidential agreement was reportedly signed last week over the affair, with Shin receiving tens of thousands of shekels in compensation in return for retracting the suit.

According to Channel 12, the financial settlement was to be paid only by the employment agency, and not the Prime Minister’s Office.

Channel 12 said that when asked last month about the incident, a statement for Sara Netanyahu dismissed it as “complete lies and delusional stories that did not exist.”

“There was and is no connection or contact, not even the slightest, between Mrs. Netanyahu and the contractor’s employee. This is an agency worker who is employed in the Prime Minister’s Office cafeteria and is not at all in the vicinity of the Prime Minister’s Residence, so all your claims are complete lies,” the statement read.

The Prime Minister’s Office said that “the employee’s employment was terminated by the employment agency alone, and in accordance with professional considerations after recurring issues were raised regarding her poor performance. The allegations made are untrue and are a complete lie.”

This was not the first time that Sara Netanyahu has been accused of mistreating or abusing employees.

In 2017, Menny Naftali, a former caretaker at the Prime Minister’s Residence, successfully sued Netanyahu and was awarded NIS 170,000 compensation (about $43,735) by the Jerusalem Labor Court. The court found that Naftali had been mistreated by Netanyahu, suffering both verbal and emotional abuse, and had been misled over his terms of employment at the residence.

Another former worker at the Prime Minister’s Residence, a 56-year-old immigrant from France whose identity has not been disclosed, sued Sara Netanyahu for mistreatment in 2020, seeking NIS 650,000 ($189,000) in damages for work-related harassment and abuse.

Last year, Sylvie Genesia, who worked as a member of the cleaning staff at the Prime Minister’s Residence on Balfour Street, sued Netanyahu and the HR company that employed her for NIS 650,000 in damages for mistreatment she said she experienced while working at the residence.

In January, the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court ordered Genesia to pay Sara Netanyahu NIS 120,000 ($38,000) after failing to submit necessary filings to the court on time. The judge emphasized in the ruling that it did not mean the court accepts Netanyahu’s version of events, but merely that Genesia had failed to comply with court regulations and repeated requests, and the case was therefore closed.

Allegations of abuse surfaced as far back as 1996 when Netanyahu fired her children’s nanny for “burning the soup.”