David Keyes () is an Israeli-American public relations representative and human rights activist. Keyes was the executive director of Advancing Human Rights, the co-founder of CyberDissidents.org, and the head of Movements.org, a platform for crowdsourcing human rights. The New York Times called Keyes "a pioneer in online activism."
From 2016 to 2018, Keyes was the foreign media advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In December 2018, Keyes resigned from his role as Netanyahu's spokesperson following allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied.
Early life
Keyes was born in Los Angeles, California. He attended Shalhevet High School and University High School. In his youth, he was a top-ranked tennis player in California and played in the junior national championships. He once trained with Andre Agassi and wanted to be a professional tennis player.
Keyes graduated with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in Middle Eastern studies. While in college, he ran a group called Students Against Dictators and wrote for the UCLA newspaper, the Daily Bruin. In 2004, Keyes conducted research at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, where he specialized in terrorism and assisted Dore Gold, Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations. In 2005, Keyes was a research intern at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He studied Arabic in Cairo in 2006. After immigrating to Israel, Keyes served in the Strategic Division of the Israel Defense Forces and completed a master's degree in diplomacy at Tel Aviv University. He is fluent in Hebrew and Arabic.
Career
Human rights activism
While working for former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky in Israel, Keyes founded CyberDissidents.org, a site meant to "highlight the voices of democratic online activists in the Middle East." CyberDissidents was a database and a platform for dissidents who wanted to reach a wider audience. Keyes was a keynote speaker at a conference on internet freedom organized by former President George W. Bush. In his speech, Keyes laid out his agenda to make dissidents more well-known.
In 2008, Keyes condemned the Egyptian government for jailing bloggers who publish criticism of the government. Keyes organized a protest at the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv to decry the ongoing detention of Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer. The assistant Egyptian consul emerged to speak with the protesters and claimed he had no knowledge of Amer's imprisonment. In 2014, Keyes called for "maximum pressure on the Egyptian government to uphold civil liberties."
In February 2010, Keyes published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal criticizing the ban on YouTube in Turkey. Keyes wrote that Turkey's status as a "European Capital of Culture" should be suspended until the YouTube ban was repealed. The op-ed sparked a protest movement for free speech in Turkey after it was reprinted in Turkish media. In October 2010, the Turkish government lifted the YouTube ban but continues to periodically restrict access to the site.
In 2010, Keyes was approached by Robert L. Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch. Bernstein was interested in finding new ways to open closed societies. Bernstein said Keyes was "a source of knowledge about all issues in the Middle East." Bernstein saw potential in CyberDissidents and asked Keyes to help establish a new group called Advancing Human Rights.
In 2011, Keyes proposed holding a Saudi Women's Grand Prix in order to protest the ban on women driving in the kingdom, where some women have been sentenced to lashing for driving. Keyes said that the goal of his campaign was to encourage the Saudi king to empower Saudi women and allow them to leave home without a man's permission. Keyes became well known in Saudi Arabia for being behind the campaign to allow Saudi women to drive. During an interview on MSNBC, Keyes displayed a whip that Saudi authorities use to lash women who are convicted of leaving home without a male relative. The senior editor of Commentary called Keyes' campaign for Saudi women's rights "the cleverest human-rights campaign of 2011."