David Keyes, the foreign press spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has left his post after several women this week accused him of sexual assault or harassment.
“In light of the false and misleading accusations against me and in order not to distract from the important work of the Prime Minister, I have asked to take time off to clear my name,” he said in a statement sent to reporters. “I am fully confident that the truth will come out.”
Keyes’s announcement came after four Knesset members called on Netanyahu to suspend Keyes until the reports about his alleged sexual misconduct had been clarified.
On Wednesday, The Times of Israel published an investigation citing 12 women who described a pattern of inappropriate behavior by Keyes toward themselves and other women in the US in the years before he worked for Netanyahu. Two women also spoke to ToI on Thursday, bringing the number to 14.
New York State Senate candidate Julia Salazar on Tuesday had detailed her alleged 2013 sexual assault by Keyes in an interview with the Jezebel website.
Hours later, Shayndi Raice, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, tweeted that she survived a “terrible encounter” with Keyes and called him a “predator” whose “mistreatment of women” is an “open secret.”
The other women described encounters they found either aggressive, offensive, overly flirtatious or otherwise inappropriate.
In response to the allegations, Keyes told The Times of Israel on Wednesday: “All of the accusations are deeply misleading and many of them are categorically false.”
Most of the accusations against him stem from the period between 2012 and 2015, when Keyes served as the executive director of Advancing Human Rights, a New York-based nonprofit seeking to connect dissidents in closed societies with people who might be able to help them.
On Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 10 reported that two female employees at the Washington, DC, think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies have complained to their superiors about Keyes having “harassed” them in 2013.
Opposition lawmaker Michal Rozin (Meretz) said that Keyes’s alleged actions should be condemned by Netanyahu.
“Keyes doesn’t only represent the prime minister to the world but also the country. Silence sends a message of support,” she wrote on Twitter.
“I call on the prime minister to suspend Keyes from his position and to clarify the facts. The brave testimonies that were gathered paint a worrying picture of a pattern of harassment,” she added. “While the rest of the world advances and campaigns for zero tolerance to sexual violence, the prime minister… remains silent.”
Keyes, who is 34 and originally from Los Angeles, has been the principal advocate of Netanyahu’s controversial media strategy of circumventing traditional outlets by posting short videos on official social media accounts to broadcast Israel’s message.
