Shock over Ari Shavit sex assault claims
ONE OF Israel’s most prominent writers resigned this week amid sexual assault allegations.
Last week, American Jewish journalist Danielle Berrin published an article about a 2014 interview with an Israeli writer who, at one point during the meeting, she said, “lurched at me like a barnyard animal, grabbing the back of my head, pulling me toward him”.
The unnamed Israeli, Ms Berrin added, also suggested that she become his mistress.
After a burst of media speculation, Ari Shavit of and Israel’s Channel 10 outed himself as the writer in question.
The controversy has sent reverberations around the diaspora. Mr Shavit’s bestselling 2013 book was popular in much of the Jewish world and, when he attended London’s Jewish Book Week in 2014, there was so much demand to hear him that organisers scheduled an extra talk.
The married father-of-three initially down- played his wrongdoing in what Ms Berrin, of the Jewish Journal, dismissed as a feeble apology. He claimed he “misconstrued” the interaction which he had considered, until he saw her article, “a friendly conversation that included some flirtation”.
But after a second woman who had been working for the American Jewish organisation J Street in 2014 accused the writer of “hand groping” her during a coffee break, Mr Shavit resigned from his journalistic positions and issued a more reflective apology. Hillel, the world’s biggest Jewish student organisation, and the pro-Israel American lobby Aipac, had already cancelled speaking engagements. In Mr Shavit’s second statement he took “full respon- sibility” for his actions. “I am ashamed of the mistakes I made with regards to people in general and women in particular,” he wrote. “I am embarrassed that I did not behave correctly to my wife and children. I am embarrassed about the consequences of what I did.” Mr Shavit continued: “In the last few days I have understood that I have been afflicted by blindness. For years I did not understand what people meant when they spoke of privileged men who do not see the damage that they cause to others. Now, I am beginning to understand.” He said he planned to “make personal am ends ”, and understood this would not be a quick process. Ms Berrin was prompted to publish her allegations by the spotlight on Donald Trump’s behaviour towards women, and hopes that when women share their experiences it will prompt “a collective soul-searching for the kind of society we want to live in”. She responded to Mr Shavit’s second apology by tweeting: “I’m grateful for Ari Shavit’s powerful, honest statement. His resolution to do ‘ heshbon hanefesh’ — an accounting of the soul — is admirable.”