Colette Avital, a former Labor member of Knesset and a former Israeli consul-general to New York, says that the late president Shimon Peres sexually assaulted her in the 1980s.
In an interview with Haaretz, Avital says she was summoned to Peres’s office, while he was serving as prime minister in 1984. The pair discussed potential jobs she could hold in his administration, after her return as a diplomat stationed in Paris.
As she got up to leave, Avital tells Haaretz, “he pressed me against the door suddenly and tried to kiss me.” Avital says she pushed him away and left the room, “and my legs were shaking when I left.”
The former MK, who worked closely with Peres for many years afterward, says however that for two years following the incident she avoided seeing him.
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