The Magistrate's Court upheld a compromise reached in a lawsuit filed by Prime Minister Yair Netanyahu's son against driver Roi Rosen who secretly recorded a conversation between the prime minister's son and his friends during a recreational outing.
The recording was published by Hadashot 2 in January 2018. Yair Netanyahu filed the lawsuit in November of that year against the driver Roi Rosen for a million shekels.
According to the court-approved compromise, Rosen will compensate Netanyahu 30,000 shekels and will even publicly apologize to him.
The apology reads, “As part of my work as a chauffeur who drove Yair Netanyahu, I recorded an exchange inside the vehicle. I didn’t do this in order to hurt Yair Netanyahu, who generally treated me with friendship and respect, and I regret the harm he has suffered for the publication and for his feeling that his private space had been violated."
In the lawsuit, Netanyahu claimed that the recording did not only affect his privacy but also “the interest of general Israeli public," due to the "loss of faith in the services provided by the State of Israel among the people who require those services for their jobs."
Under Israeli law, a person may record a conversation that he is a party to, even without the consent of the other parties to that conversation. However, recording a conversation that a person is not a party to is a criminal offense of "wiretapping," and also creates a cause for civil tort.