A politician running for Knesset with the Arab-majority Hadash party is under pressure to withdraw amid allegations of sexual harassment filed by a number of women, according to Hebrew media reports.

Human rights activist Jafar Farah is second on the Hadash list. The party is running on a joint slate with the Ta’al and Balad parties, in which he is positioned in the fourth slot.

Farah is facing allegations of harassment that were lodged with two lobby groups, Women Against Violence and Assiwar-The Feminist Arab Movement, which claim that since 2019 they have received six testimonies, the  Ynet news site reported Wednesday.

The Haaretz newspaper reported last month that a further complaint was made directly to the Hadash party.

Hadash has so far decided not to pull Farah from its slate.

The party formed a special team to look into the allegations, but has stressed that it is not an investigative committee and is not authorized to determine whether the claims against Farah are true. Rather, the team looked at how the parties will deal with the matter from a political, ethical, and organizational point of view, Ynet reported.

In August, Hadash adopted the team’s recommendations, which included proposing to Farah that he withdraw his candidacy, but he refused, according to the outlet.

Farah has issued statements........

© The Times of Israel