Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israel’s prime minister, is facing a new lawsuit from a former employee accusing her of abusive and threatening behaviour and treating staff like “slaves”.

The details of the latest case, which follows hard on the heels of two previous cases that found against Netanyahu for wrongful employment practices, also follows a warning that she faces potential prosecution allegations of fraudulent spending in the prime minister’s official residence.

The new civil suit was filed on Thursday by an unnamed 24-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman who worked as a cleaner at the official residence in Balfour Street, Jerusalem, for a month earlier this year.

The suit brought by a former cleaner – identified only as SR – alleges Netanyahu verbally abused the woman, and claims that during one outburst she appeared about to strike her.

The legal claim adds Netanyahu regards employees as “slaves”, preferring highly religious women from the ultra-Orthodox community, whom it suggests she believes to be harder working, as well as more introverted and compliant.

Describing a dress code related to Netanyahu’s alleged concern with extreme cleanliness (also alluded to in previous court cases brought by former employees) the suit alleges: “SR was required to pack each item [of clothing] separately in two sealed and sterile bags, and at the end of each work day was supposed to take them home, wash them (even if they had not been worn) and reseal them in new sterile bags.”

The claim adds: “Mrs Netanyahu emphasised in an unequivocal manner that SR must ‘take care’ to ensure that her children did not come into contact with the washed items and/or the sterile bags,” explaining “that children carry many diseases and it was feared that the items could be contaminated”.

According to the claim, staff were required to wash hands on multiple occasions, were prohibited from eating while at work and also reprimanded for asking for breaks.

According to SR’s deposition she was scolded by Netanyahu, who allegedly said: “I have just been to Argentina and suffered for the state of Israel. You have some nerve asking for breaks.”

Matters allegedly came to a head at the beginning of October after Netanyahu allegedly became angry over a missing pair of shoes when – the claim continues – she appeared to raise her hand as if to hit the cleaner.

The Facebook page for Benjamin Netanyahu – who has habitually denied any allegations of wrongdoing in the household as persecution, even after the two successful lawsuits against his wife – once again refuted the new allegations.

On Facebook, the prime minister called the allegations a “blackmail attempt” and an “absurd, false claim”. He said: “An employee who worked only a few days, and for that she is trying to blackmail us for 225,000 shekels [£48,500] and get easy publicity and money, and defame Mrs Netanyahu. There is no end to the persecution. There is no end to the lies, and there is no end to the character assassination.”