JERUSALEM — A prominent Israeli journalist and author resigned Sunday from his posts at a television station and a newspaper amid allegations of sexual harassment by two American Jewish women.
“I am ashamed of the mistakes I made with regards to people in general and women in particular,” Shavit said in the statement. “I am embarrassed that I did not behave correctly to my wife and children. I am embarrassed about the consequences of what I did.”
Danielle Berrin, a reporter for the Jewish Journal in Los Angeles, wrote a cover story last week entitled “My sexual assault, and yours: Every woman’s story.” She said her goal was to raise the issue of sexual assault in the context of accusations being leveled against U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Berrin stopped short of identifying Shavit as the “prominent Israeli journalist” who had, among other things, asked her a series of intimate questions about her personal life and “lurched at me like a barnyard animal, grabbing the back of my head, pulling me toward him” during an interview she was doing for the paper.
She explained to the Jerusalem Post that naming the journalist was not the real issue at hand, it was rather that women in the United States now feel emboldened to talk about sexual assault after the publication by The Washington Post of a taped conversation in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. (Trump has since called the conversation “locker room talk,” but numerous women have stepped forward and accused him of groping them and other sexual acts. He has denied those accusations.)
But by Thursday, after Berrin's article was spotlighted by Israeli media and as rumors began to swirl, Shavit admitted that he was the journalist in question. He said he had met with Berrin in February 2014 in Los Angeles “for a conversation.”
“Today, I sadly understand that I misconstrued the interaction between us during that meeting,” Shavit said in his initial statement. He said he thought the two “had had a friendly conversation that included some flirtation.”
Berrin responded immediately in another Jewish Journal column saying that Shavit’s claim was “absurd.”
“The only thing I wanted from Ari Shavit was an interview about his book. No person of sound judgment would have interpreted his advances on me as anything other than unwanted, aggressive sexual contact,” she wrote.
By Sunday, another woman, a 26-year-old employee of the liberal Jewish American advocacy group J Street, had come forward with a similar claim against Shavit.
She said she had been tasked with picking the writer up from a Baltimore train station when he suggested they stop for coffee. She said while sitting in a cafe, Shavit reached across the table and started fondling her hand in what she described as “hand groping,” U.S. Jewish newspaper the Forward reported.
Shavit told the woman, who has not been named, that he would love to see her again — alone — the next time she visits Israel.
“I was very uncomfortable,” the woman told the Forward.
Shavit had been set to participate in a tour of U.S. university campuses sponsored by Hillel International. But in light of the accusations, the Jewish campus group said it was suspending the tour.
“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,” Shavit said in his statement Sunday.
He said that he now intended to “devote more time to being with my wife and children, who are most valuable to me, and to make personal amends,” Haaretz reported.
