Meretz accused of mishandling sexual assault complaints
Party activist denies misconduct claims, says they are an attempt at ‘political assassination’ ahead of primaries
The Meretz party leadership faced criticism Wednesday for allegedly mishandling complaints from three women who claimed that a senior member of the party had assaulted or harassed them.
In recent weeks, party leader Tamar Zandberg received complaints alleging that a well-known party activist, parliamentary aide and member of the party’s executive committee had behaved inappropriately toward them. One of the women, a Meretz member, said the activist had assaulted her at a party event 10 years ago.
After the first complaint surfaced in early November, the activist was forced to resign as MK Ilan Gilon’s parliamentary aide, but remained a member of Meretz’s executive committee even after two more women came forward.
The complaints come at a sensitive time for the progressive party, which has embraced the #MeToo campaign against sexual violence, as it heads to a primary race ahead of the April 9 elections.
The first woman to come forward two months ago is a party member who said the activist assaulted her in a bathroom at a party event ten years ago.
“The complainants are being threatened and sued into silence, and the party is protecting him,” the woman charged in an interview Wednesday with Israel Radio. “We can’t allow a situation where there are complaints and the party does nothing…. He’s the one who should be sitting at home, while I should not need to be afraid to go to party events.”
When the first complaint surfaced, the accused activist insisted it “does not reflect the events as they actually happened.
“What happened was by mutual consent and agreement a decade ago, when both of us were younger than 20 and at the start of a friendly and sexual relationship that lasted for many years afterward,” he said.
The activist’s attorney, Efrat Nahmani-Bar, suggested on Wednesday that the complaints were a coordinated effort to remove the activist from contention in the primaries.
“We support those who were hurt, if they were hurt. Set up a mechanism for finding out the truth,” Nahmani-Bar told Israel Radio. “The activist has been begging for an inquiry for two months. It appears the [first complainant] and another party member are trying to create a trail of false complaints. You have to be careful [with complaints] when there’s a political assassination underway.”
Zandberg said Wednesday that the case had revealed a gap in the party’s rules.
“I haven’t been silencing this story. Each of the women has been receiving updates from me and the party. But I don’t have the authority to remove someone from the party,” she told Israel Radio.
“I’m now working to create regulations to prevent a situation where I don’t have the tools” to handle complaints of sexual misbehavior, Zandberg added. “There is intensive work on this.”
