Ari Shavit’s humiliating fall from grace: AIPAC, Hillel cancel events in wake of groping story

Ari Shavit, maybe the most influential Israeli journalist in the United States in recent years, has been shunned by major Jewish institutions in recent days following his coming forward as the previously-unidentified author who “groped, grabbed and pulled” American journalist Danielle Berrin in 2014.

Hillel International announced yesterday it had canceled an upcoming speaking tour for Shavit, explaining the decision with particularly harsh terms.

“In light of recent circumstances, and in keeping with our strong position against sexual assault, Hillel International has suspended Ari Shavit’s campus tour,” the group said in a statement. “At Hillel International, we engage with hundreds of thousands of college students at more than 500 campuses across the country every year. We actively oppose rape culture and sexual assault on campus and are committed to supporting survivors.”

Hillel serves as an umbrella for Jewish interest and Israel advocacy groups across U.S. colleges and organized a 28 university tour last spring for Shavit.

Similarly, today the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) announced it too was breaking ties with Shavit, nixing a November 10th event scheduled in northern California.

If the past two days are any indication of what is to come, Shavit’s fall appears as dramatic as his rise to acclaim, with tumbling humiliation undoing the respect he once garnered in synagogues and Jewish spaces and the New Yorker magazine as Israel’s moral voice from the liberal Zionist camp.

Shavit is an important reporter and commentator. He made his career as a columnist for Haaretz and shot to attention in the U.S. with his 2013 best seller, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, an evergreen on Israel’s journey from the British mandate period to present day that draws, in part, from the colonial travelogues of his great-grandfathers.

His book was regarded as having historical value because it documented the Nakba in the pages of the New Yorker: an excerpt on the Lydda massacre of 1948, which was followed by ethnic cleansing, a new take for Americans on a topic that otherwise had long since saturated the market. Shavit’s work stood out for its analytical force that praised Israel’s secular Jewish culture while at the same time was reflective of crimes carried out by the state’s founders against Palestinians. He posed further criticism of rising religious fervor amongst settlers over the green line.

His analysis was not without detractors. Critics challenged him as too forgiving of the dispossessions of Palestinians by Zionist militias in the pages of Mondoweiss and the outlets at the center of this scandal, Haaretz and the Jewish Journal, among others. Advocates for Palestinian refugees were disturbed by Shavit’s dismissal of their plight: “the Jewish State cannot let them return. Israel has a right to live, and if Israel is to live it cannot resolve the Lydda issue.”

No one doubted Shavit’s influence.

Both President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were have said to read the book, and discussed it together, reported the JTA. Thomas Friedman wrote in a column that he looked to Shavit for insider knowledge of the underground scenes in Israel since the 1980s. “Shavit celebrates the Zionist man-made miracle — from its start-ups to its gay bars — while remaining affectionate, critical, realistic and morally anchored,” Friedman said after the book was published, recommending everyone read it and talk about it. Shavit was attended on Charlie Rose and at the 92d Street Y by New Yorker editor David Remnick, who discovered him for American readers.  

Danielle Berrin. (Photo: Jewish Journal)
Danielle Berrin. (Photo: Jewish Journal)

Yet when Berrin attempted to join the conversation by clinching an interview with Shavit while he was promoting the book in 2014 in Los Angeles, her encounter as penned in the Jewish Journal last week depicts an amoral aggressor who propositioned her to become his mistress, and intimated he desired to impregnate her.

In this account, Shavit was no moral giant. And, consistent with victims of sexual assault, Berrin recalled key details of the environment—“I remember staring at his scotch glass. The swirling, caramel-colored liquid caught the dim light of the hotel lobby, reflected it back to me.”

“He lurched at me like a barnyard animal, grabbing the back of my head, pulling me toward him.” 

Initially in the account, Shavit was a mystery man.  Berrin said her alleged assaulter was an “accomplished journalist from Israel.” She explained, she hoped to bring attention to sexual assault in general and not harp on the celebrity of the assaulter. “Most women—and even some men—have stories of sexual harassment, abuse or exploitation over the course of their lifetime,” she wrote.

The bulk of her essay did not relate the details of that night with Shavit in a hotel lobby. Rather, Berrin used her personal experience as a jumping off point to explore the wave of discourses surrounding sexual assault detonated by presidential candidate Donald Trump’s brags about sexual assault in a 2005 hot-mic tape. 

Berrin urged other women to come forward with their stories. Yet, the intrigue and media follow-up focused on the unnamed assailant. Reporters were in a race to name Shavit, and then to explore the disservice the story will do to liberal Zionism.

Israel’s News 1 first named Shavit as the likely alleged culprit in a Hebrew language article earlier this week. The report said that his bosses had considered severing employment. And some have called on Haaretz to take action against Shavit. 

English-speaking news outlets initially did not name Shavit, although commenters writing below the articles identified him, resulting in a few days of there being an open secret that Shavit was the man.

After a few days, Shavit came forward in an apology published by Haartez Thursday in which he corroborated Berrin’s version of the events with one stark difference. In Shavit’s eyes, no assault took place. The same events that caused Berrin to fear for safety, he saw as a “flirtation,” adding “I sadly understand that I misconstrued the interaction between us during that meeting.”

In response, Berrin dissected Shavit’s mea culpa yesterday, again in the pages of the Jewish Journal.

“His claim is 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 added later, “I am glad Ari Shavit has at least acknowledged an encounter took place. As a committed Jew, I am always open to the possibility of forgiveness and redemption.”

“But Ari Shavit has yet to apologize for what he actually did; he did not apologize for committing sexual assault,” Berrin said.

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‘She added later, “I am glad Ari Shavit has at least acknowledged an encounter took place. As a committed Jew, I am always open to the possibility of forgiveness and redemption.”

“But Ari Shavit has yet to apologize for what he actually did; he did not apologize for committing sexual assault,” Berrin said.”

I think his being able to return to his post at Ha’aretz should be contingent on that very thing. Thank you for coming forward.

She added later, “I am glad Ari Shavit has at least acknowledged an encounter took place. ”

Far, far more than Trump or Bill Clinton have done, Although that is not saying much.

” As a committed Jew, I am always open to the possibility of forgiveness and redemption.”

Smart, And clearly she is not forgetting and appropriately so,

“Reporters were in a race to name Shavit, and then to explore the disservice the story will do to liberal Zionism.’ Sounds like his very bad behavior is all ready being used to silence the facts that he explores and writes about,

The forthcoming unauthorized biography of Ari Shavit Story –

My Promised Gland: The Triumph and Tragedy of His Fail.

I got about a third of the way through his book. From page one I recognized as the usual mythification story/prism all liberal Zionists see and paint Israel with. Generally a glorification of Israel w/ the occasional “But Israel’s not perfect” phrase sprinkled in here or there to give the illusion of “liberal” street creed. I may be somewhat exaggerating or overstating it, but I’m so sick of reading the kind of sh*t like he had in that book I may be primed to over-react to it.

But it certainly doesn’t look like Berrin’s over-reacting to Shavit. Looks like he’s scum and deserves to be denounced for trying to force himself on her.

Looks like the US-Zionist exchange isn’t as one-sided as we thought.

In the recent past, rape by a President was properly dealt with as a police event, not considered likely to diminish the aggressor’s ability to rape, dispossess and displace the Palestinian population.

Now, though, it goes Puritan-American: the sexual assaulter is considered unable to do his job of excusing the Nakba and genocidal action; public lynching supersedes proper police action. American culture wins over Zionist entity this time, as with jeans, chewing gum and John Wayne.

To me Shavit’s reaction and his apologetic non-apology sounds like a typical israeli male’s. Shavit’s advances would be considered ‘all in a day’s work” in israel. Such aggressive behavior based on the premise that it’s normal macho behavior is so common over there that it is barely worth mentioning. probably one third of females serving in the IDF were at one point raped and many times assaulted. I wouldn’t know what it’s like in a workplace but my guess is that women who work in larger firms sometimes wish there was a hijab or a burqa to ward off the many unwanted advances. This happens disproportionately more to women who are younger, good looking and generally out-going. Attributes that make them appear somehow “accessible”. The usual reaction is to shun the man and use a form of public shaming by spreading the word. That when the assault did not actually culminate in rape. IF it did, many times the reaction is silence and self-blame for allowing a situation to evolve that far.Almost every israeli woman has such stories to tell, though most would rather not.

As the few prosecutions of men in power in israel demonstrate, these situations become especially problematic when the man is older and in a powerful position. A good rule of thumb is that power goes to the head, and not just in israel.

I base these observations a bit on experience (left israel when I was quite young, so I had a chance to experience typical predatory behavior many times over, and predatory it is) and most on stories I hear from there and the occasional reading of hebrew accounts for the more recent climate over there. I know that personally, having come to understand the israeli male behavior, I developed certain traits and behavior patterns almost sub-consciously that were designed no doubt to ward off bad situations that would force me to write someone off for life (caveat: I did not have female friends to gossip with. Just other males and those would hardly be the right ones to commiserate with). For example, one defense tactic was to not be in a situation where one is alone with a certain type of individual male. especially a much older one. Another is to have clarity about my own designs and interests so as to avoid any appearance of flirtation when the interest is not there on my part, and when there is a high likelihood of misinterpretation of mere friendliness for an invitation. I am no longer there, but the attributes persist through life for better and for worse. Even when in America where the aggressiveness is rarely so overt and in your face (again, it’s my experience, and only as a comparison. I was never an undergraduate in the US so wouldn’t know what the climate is like there). One thing I noticed in israeli females, even ones who are older, is the way they can move from friendly to freezing in a blink of an eye, almost. It’s like a switch is thrown. probably a defense mechanism developed over their youth.

It will take probably an anthropologist/psychologist team to dissect Israeli male and female more and behavior patterns. best to think of it as a kind of a jungle. Avigail Abarbanel can no doubt shed more in depth light on this interesting phenomenon of inter-gender behavior in a place like israel. may be she should write another article on this matter for MW? I am sure it’ll be interesting.

None of this is to hold Danielle blameful in any way. She would likely not have recognized the signs that her pleasant demeanor was eliciting in an interview situation where the goal is to put the subject at ease so they’ll speak freely. She would probably not realize that his increasing “friendliness’ were all signs of trouble to come. because it’s not an American she was dealing with. In her place, i would have probably seen it coming from a mile away and changed the tone of the conversation, and possibly reschedule another meeting in a place where alcohol is not served. But then i would know things she didn’t and no reason she would, coming from a more civilized jewish milieu. How do you note that suddenly the rules of the jungle apply and not the rules of a jewish day camp? or a friendly collegiate encounter?

I do have BTW one funny story to tell. Funny to me because i made it so and nothing bad happened, though it could have. may be another time, in response to an Avigail well-measured account of the mores of the jungle.