Israel, former MP: “Molested twice by Shimon Peres”

“Shimon Peres sexually harassed me twice.” The late Israeli president, Nobel Peace Prize winner, is accused by Colette Avital, a former Labor MP who was also ambassador to Portugal and Consul General in New York. Interviewed by Haaretz, 81-year-old Avital said that the first harassment took place in the early 1980s in Paris, where she was part of the Israeli diplomatic mission. Then leader of the Labor opposition, Peres was visiting the French capital and invited her to dinner at his hotel. When Avital arrived at the hotel, she was told that the meeting would take place in the room for “security reasons”. Peres, however, was waiting for her in her pajamas and tried to drag her onto the bed. Avital fled the room and then dryly told Yossi Beilin, Peres’s assistant at the time, that she no longer wanted to be alone with him. Three years later, in 1984, Avital returned to Israel. An agreement had just been reached for a rotating government between Peres and Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir. Avital hoped for a place in the new administration, but was made to understand that it was difficult for a woman. She was received by Peres, who had become prime minister, who refused to give her a job. Then “he pushed me against the wall and tried to kiss me,” he said.