'Sexual allegation note caused indescribable harm'

Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Wednesday responded for the first time to a letter sent to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accusing him of sexual misconduct, which was discovered to be fake on Tuesday.

“It’s hard to describe the damage that has been done to me. I hope that there will come a time when human dignity will return to be a protected value,” Sa’ar said at a conference in Eilat.

A day earlier, police confirmed that the document was forged. “The examination showed that the ‘Sa’ar document’ was definitely forged,” police chief Insp.- Gen. Yohanan Danino said at a Tel Aviv District police conference.

“I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart many people here in the audience, as well as many people in the general public who encouraged and supported me in the recent days that were not easy for me, and for my loved ones and other people who were affected,” he added.

The Justice Ministry had ordered Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein to instruct police to begin a preliminary investigation of the letter sent to Netanyahu and Likud activists signed by M.C., an Education Ministry employee.

The letter claims that M.C. had a romantic relationship with Sa’ar, in which he took advantage of his position as minister. M.C., who still works with Sa’ar, says she did not write the letter, but has not answered inquiries as to why she did not complain to the police about the alleged forgery.

While current Likud MKs had avoided commenting on the issue until the circumstances surrounding the allegations become clearer, former MK Carmel Shama-Hacohen expressed certainty that the letter was part of “a very systematic campaign that includes YouTube clips and articles pulled out of the archive by this or that reporter who badmouthed him.”

Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.