Hours after new sexual harassment claims were made against Interior Minister Silvan Shalom Wednesday, the Israel Police clarified that the matter would not be investigated before an official complaint was filed. Meanwhile, Shalom's wife, Judy Nir Mozes, said on Thursday she would wage an all-out campaign to prove her husband was innocent. "I will eventually speak out. Everyone has a past, [a] present," she said on Twitter. "I have been exposed to new details on them [the accusers]. ... I am not going to stay silent, even if it means going to jail." Four women came forward on Wednesday to accuse Shalom of sexual improprieties. The first, who was once employed by Shalom, told Haaretz newspaper that Shalom had touched her "private parts." Another spoke to Channel 10 and made similar accusations. Shalom's office dismissed the Haaretz report, saying it was "based on rehashed stories that were put to rest by the attorney general and the Israel Police." Shalom's office also charged that the Channel 10 report was false. The third woman posted her support for the accusers online, saying: "You know why I believe Shalom's accusers? First, because I generally believe those who say they are victims of sexual crimes. And second, because he caressed my leg when he gave me a ride from the Knesset in 1993." Last year, just before Shalom announced his bid to replace then-President Shimon Peres, a 45-year-old woman filed a sexual harassment complaint against him, saying Shalom had made inappropriate sexual advances when he was a cabinet minister in the late 1990s, when he was her superior. "In 1998, when I was working as an executive assistant at the Science Ministry, Silvan Shalom told me he needed to speak with me. Shortly thereafter, he called me on my cellphone and told me to arrive at the Hyatt Hotel in Jerusalem," she said. "I arrived at the room to find him sitting on the double bed in a bathrobe watching sports, and he asked me to sit next to him and he told me, 'You're going to change my life.' Throughout the entire encounter I kept asking him what he meant by that. After a while, he told me that his driver was waiting for him and that he had to go, and to wait 10 minutes before I leave the room. I wasn't sure what was happening, I was scared and felt uncomfortable and didn't know what to do." Shortly after she aired those allegations, Shalom was questioned by the police "under caution" (as a possible suspect). Ultimately though, because the statute of limitations had expired and no other woman came forward, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein chose to shut the case. Although Weinstein and the police had received information suggesting Shalom had allegedly harassed two other women, neither was willing to file a complaint. One of them, referred to as G., was living abroad at the time, but spoke to police about what Shalom allegedly did. Speaking with Channel 2 on Wednesday, G. elaborated on her ordeal. "It [the harassment] started right after I started working for him," she told Channel 2. "One day, I was told the minister was waiting for me in his office. I entered his office and he asked that I sit next to him; he talked to me about how demanding his work was and then asked that I hold his hand. He then started caressing my palm and moved up my hand. It was clear that he was aroused; I was in shock." G. said this behavior continued for about two years, "not on a daily basis, but on a weekly basis, at the very least. He would caress me without my consent, put his hands on my breasts, and I had to physically remove them. I would tell him: 'Stop, someone might enter the room and see this.' Whenever there was a door buzzer sound, indicating someone wanted to enter the office, Shalom would lunge backward as if nothing had happened." G. said Shalom also behaved that way when they were on official engagements overseas. "He asked me to arrive in his hotel room at the end of the day," she said. "He waited for me inside, he was naked, without even a bathrobe on. He said the same things I heard he said to the other woman [who complained about his 1998 actions last year], he told me, 'Come sit next to me, do good things to me, now is our night, our time, you can show me your love as well, no-'" G. said she had been "scared to fly with him" ever since. The statute of limitations has yet to expire on the events described by G., but she has been adamantly opposed to filing a police complaint. Shortly after some of the new allegations were aired on Wednesday, Meretz MKs Zehava Galon, Tamar Zandberg and Michal Rozin asked Weinstein to summon Shalom for questioning and launch a new probe into his past behavior. "Under the law, even if no complaint has been filed, the authorities must launch an investigation when a crime may have been committed. This is all the more important when a minister is involved," they wrote to Weinstein. "An elected official should not hunker down and remain silent or just issue a laconic denial to the press." MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Joint Arab List), who heads the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, also wrote to Weinstein and asked that he launch a new probe.
