MAARIV DESERVES TO BE SUED FOR SLANDERING SARA NETANYAHU

The prime minister's wife has opened up a lawsuit against the leftist Maariv paper:

JERUSALEM (AP) - The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sued an Israeli newspaper on Monday for libel and defamation of character, claiming the Maariv daily is "maliciously trying to humiliate" her.

Sara Netanyahu is claiming damages of $270,000 from Maariv and demanding an apology and a correction for an item the paper ran last Friday. The story stated that Mrs. Netanyahu fired a 70-year-old gardener at the prime minister's official residence. The gardener lost a son in one of Israel's wars.

Mrs. Netanyahu claimed in a suit filed at a Jerusalem court that the man was never fired, continues to work at the residence and the news item contained not "one grain of truth."

She said reporter Ben Caspit never asked for her response, and the paper was trying to humiliate her and "portray her as an insensitive woman who abuses the weak, is cruel to an old gardener and fires a bereaved father for no reason."

The suit comes a week after a former housekeeper sued Sara Netanyahu for alleged verbal abuse and other mistreatment.

Maariv is slandering her, and that's what they did a decade ago too, harrassing a woman for being married to a right-wing politician.

The new lawsuit sparked a media frenzy, with Maariv and Yediot Ahronot running huge front page headlines critical of the Netanyahus. The two dailies are engaged in a bitter circulation war with "Yisrael Hayom," a newspaper distributed free of charge and strongly supportive of Netanyahu.

What that part signals is that they're vengeful of Yisrael Hayom because they're publishing what draws the crowds, and they don't like that. Actually, even the AP Wire is clearly filled with jealousy.

I think she's doing the right thing this time to fight back against these disgusting, ungrateful papers whose ownerships have a problem with competition and honesty. A decade ago, they and the police even targeted the Netanyahus on trumped up charges of taking gifts and other items against the rules, when in fact they had returned all required items. It's time now that the Netanyahus start fighting back against the resurging hostility of the press, which again looks out to commit more defamation.