Israel will swear in the Likud party’s first openly gay member of the Knesset as a replacement for Silvan Shalom, who stood down on Sunday night as interior minister amid allegations that he had sexually harassed several women.
Amir Ohana, a lawyer, is head of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) caucus of the governing Likud party. Shalom’s decision to step down was not expected to affect the stability of the rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu.
Israeli media reported in recent days that several women have complained that Shalom, who served as the deputy prime minister and interior minister, had harassed them. Israel’s attorney general instructed the police to investigate the allegations on Sunday.
Shalom said: “I have decided to resign my position as minister and member of the Knesset”, adding that he was worried about the toll that recent events might take on his family.
Ohana, 39, lives in Rishon Lezion, and is a criminal lawyer and former official of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. He and his partner, Alon Hadad, have a son and a daughter together, born through a surrogate in the US. He represented the Tel Aviv district for Likud and was placed at number 32 on the Likud party list.
In an interview last year Ohana told Israeli media, when criticising the LGBT community: “The gay community needs to grow up. I am against berating, invectives and boycotts every time someone disagrees with the agenda.” He said the establishment of an LGBT caucus in Likud was met with people “turning their nose” and some “poisonous attacks”.
After a stabbing at the gay pride parade in Jerusalem this summer, Ohana accused the left of appropriating the fight for LGBT rights. “How is it that ‘Pride in Likud’ has become the focus of your sharpened arrows,” he asked on his Facebook page at the time. “Is it because you prefer the right to be full of racist, sexist, homophobes because it makes it easier for you to be on the ‘good’ side?” he told Haaretz.
Shalom is not the first high-level Israeli politician to be forced from office in a scandal over allegations of sexual misconduct.
A former Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, left office in 2007 and was later sentenced to seven years in prison after being convicted of twice raping an aide when he was a cabinet minister in the late 1990s, and sexually assaulting two other women who worked for him while he was president. Katsav denied any wrongdoing.