..that is the question, regarding those quotes attributed to her over the past few weeks.
Israeli model Bar Rafaeli, who is the girlfriend of Leonardo DiCaprio, is suing the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper for libel after it published an interview with her last week under the headline “Bar Rafaeli against the State of Israel.”
Rafaeli’s lawyers sent a letter to the newspaper’s editorial office demanding it apologize for the headline and compensate her for personal damages at a sum of half a million shekels.
In the interview, Rafaeli was quoted as saying, “Why is it good to die for our country? Isn’t it better to live in New York?” She was also quoted as saying, “What does it does matter, Uganda or Israel,” as well as, “I am not sorry for not serving in the army, because I profited in a big way,” and “I’ll never bring a celebrity to Israel because they have chutzpah here like nowhere else in the world.”
Her comments were published in newspapers in Israel and around the world. A few days later Yedioth published an article claiming “Now Bar is slandering Israel abroad,” in reference to an interview Rafaeli gave to the fashion magazine Tattler.
Rafaeli’s lawyer Dror Arad Alon sent a letter to Yedioth claiming that the newspaper published “false, tendentious and malicious quotes which lack connection to Rafaeli’s comments.”
Arad-Alon went on to say in the letter that Rafaeli’s comments were disseminated throughout the media “representing Rafaeli in a ludicrous and poisonous way, essentially abandoning her to public fury for no reason.” He added that the Yedioth article “initiated and encouraged a media and public lynch of Bar Rafaeli after she was wickedly manipulated by the newspaper’s reporter and editors.”
I don’t quite understand the charge here. Did she actually make the comments attributed to her, and she is upset about the Yedioth Ahronoth headline? Or is she claiming that the quotes themselves were false?