Opposition Israeli lawmakers on Sunday called on the ministry of foreign affairs to dismiss Ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer for failing to report sexual misconduct allegations against one of Netanyahu’s top aides.
David Keyes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman to foreign media, was accused of sexually assaulting or molesting 12 US women, including a candidate for New York’s state senate, who is also a prominent journalist.
A senior editor in Wall Street Journal warned Dermer about Keyes’ alleged misconduct toward women in November 2016, according to a political source, adding that he told him the latter “posed a risk to women in Israeli government offices,” yet Dermer did not do anything in this regard.
Times of Israel news website revealed the scandal last week and said that after knowing that he has harassed two women, 10 other women contacted it and informed it that Keyes had "behaved improperly" with them, but they requested to remain anonymous.
Democratic candidate for the US Senate Julia Salazar accused Keyes of sexually assaulting her in 2013 before taking office as a media adviser to Netanyahu in 2016.
Wall Street Journal reporter Shayndi Raice tweeted she too had a “terrible encounter” with Keyes before he became Netanyahu’s spokesman.
She described him as a “predator” and someone who had “absolutely no conception of the word ‘no.'”
Times of Israel reported that 10 additional women had come forward with claims against Keyes, all of whom reported, mostly independently of one another, unpleasant encounters with Keyes and with several men who corroborated some of their accounts.
The allegations, according to the report, “include one detailed accusation of physically aggressive behavior by Keyes, claims of overly aggressive advances by him and incidents of inappropriate behavior.”
Keyes was first accused of sexual assault by Salazar in April 2016, in a private Facebook post that was subsequently deleted, but that Salazar has now acknowledged posting.
Keyes’s work in Netanyahu’s Office has been frozen. But Israeli opposition MPs have demanded additional investigation with Keys and Dermer.
