Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara won a libel suit on Sunday against an Israeli journalist who claimed that she once kicked her husband out of their car during an argument. The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court ordered Igal Sarna, who writes for Yedioth Ahronoth, to pay the couple 100,000 shekels ($28,000) in damages for what it described as a defamatory Facebook post last year, and another 15,000 shekels ($4,000) for legal expenses. Sarna said he plans to appeal the verdict. A year ago, Sarna wrote on his Facebook page that an angry Sara Netanyahu had ordered the prime minister's convoy to stop on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway in the middle of the night, because she did not want him in the car. Netanyahu testified at the trial that the alleged incident, which Sarna said he learned about from an acquaintance citing one of the prime minister's security guards, never took place. In a 50-page ruling, Judge Azaria Alcalay wrote that Sarna's post was contemptuous and derisive and set out to hurt the prime minister and his wife personally and damage their reputations. He further said that the defense failed to prove the post was based on anything more than malicious gossip and rumors, essentially ruling that Sarna's assertion was a lie. "A review of the defense's statements indicates that it is suffused with defamatory statements directed at the plaintiffs in regard to reports that may be founded on gossip or rumors and have nothing to do with the matter at the heart of this lawsuit. Furthermore, many of the allegations the defendant attributes to the plaintiffs in his defense are utterly unfounded," Alcalay's ruling read. "The plaintiffs, being the prime minister of Israel and his wife, are a permanent focus of public interest and the subject of endless press coverage and countless negative and unflattering articles -- to each his own opinion. These publications are part of public discourse and part of freedom of the press and the freedom of speech. Still, these publications, including the negative ones, cannot deny the plaintiffs the right to defend their good reputation," he ruled. Netanyahu and his wife issued a statement Sunday, saying, "Finally, justice has been served."
