44 Facts About David Keyes

David Keyes is an Israeli-American public relations representative and human rights activist.

From 2016 to 2018, David Keyes was the foreign media advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

David Keyes attended Shalhevet High School and University High School.

David Keyes once trained with Andre Agassi and wanted to be a professional tennis player.

David Keyes graduated with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in Middle Eastern studies.

In 2004, David 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, David Keyes was a research intern at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In 2008, David Keyes condemned the Egyptian government for jailing bloggers who publish criticism of the government.

David Keyes organized a protest at the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv to decry the ongoing detention of Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer.

In February 2010, David Keyes published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal criticizing the ban on YouTube in Turkey.

David Keyes wrote that Turkey's status as a "European Capital of Culture" should be suspended until the YouTube ban was repealed.

In 2010, Keyes was approached by Robert L Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch.

In 2011, David 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.

David 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.

David Keyes became well known in Saudi Arabia for being behind the campaign to allow Saudi women to drive.

In 2012, David Keyes became the head of Movements, an online platform for human rights activists founded in 2008 by Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas.

David Keyes reintroduced Movements in 2014 as a platform for crowdsourcing human rights.

In 2013, David Keyes confronted Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in New York about human rights in Iran.

David Keyes asked Zarif when Majid Tavakoli, one of Iran's most prominent student activists, would be freed from prison.

David Keyes said he was "totally overjoyed" that his confrontation with Zarif led to Tavakoli's release.

On 13 November 2013, David Keyes co-authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal with Garry Kasparov, a former presidential candidate in Russia and former world chess champion.

In 2014, David Keyes was the driving force behind the bipartisan effort in Congress to rename the street address of the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, to No 1 Liu Xiaobo Plaza, after the famed Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

In 2016, David Keyes was awarded the Charles Benton Digital Equity Champion Award.

David Keyes is a fellow at the Disruptor Foundation, an organization whose mission is to raise awareness of disruptive innovation theory and encourage its application in order to bring about changes in society.

In 2015, David Keyes increased his use of humor and satire in order to highlight the human rights records of various countries.

David Keyes published a number of videos documenting his "punkings" of Saudi and Iranian diplomats.

Outside the hall, David Keyes led a "celebration" of a milestone: Iran hanging 1,000 prisoners in 18 months.

David Keyes parked a van on the street and offered free ice cream to passers-by.

David Keyes used the opportunity to protest Saudi Arabia's treatment of homosexuals and threw a "big gay party" in the lobby of the Gaylord.

In March 2016, David Keyes was named the Prime Minister of Israel's spokesperson to foreign media.

David Keyes replaced Mark Regev, who became Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom.

David Keyes was credited with writing Netanyahu's viral video response to the Orlando nightclub shooting in June 2016.

David Keyes told the New York Times in September 2016 that the eight videos he produced for Netanyahu had over 42 million views.

In December 2016, David Keyes said that Israel had "ironclad" information from sources in the Arab world that the Obama administration helped craft a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for housing construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem and "pushed hard" to ensure its passage.

David Keyes proposed that Netanyahu display a piece of the drone at the upcoming Munich Security Conference.

David Keyes stashed the drone piece under the podium before Netanyahu's speech.

David Keyes was credited for his role in shaping the prime minister's media strategy.

In June 2018, David Keyes was credited with producing a viral video in which Netanyahu offered to share Israeli water technology with Iran, which suffers from severe drought.

In July 2018, David Keyes was reported to be the leading candidate to replace Danny Danon as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations.

One report said that in 2013, David Keyes had been barred from entering The Wall Street Journal opinion section's offices without appointment due to complaints made by female employees.

Israel's Channel 10 reported that two female employees at the Washington, DC, think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies had complained to their superiors about David Keyes having "harassed" them in 2013.

The commission investigated the role of Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer who had acknowledged that he was warned that David Keyes was likely to be a threat to women working at the Prime Minister's office, but failed to alert the relevant authorities.

Hershkovitz explained that his reason for closing the enquiry was that the alleged offences had taken place before Mr David Keyes was a government employee and that no criminal complaint had been registered with the police.

David Keyes pioneered groundbreaking videos which presented basic facts about Israel and enabled me to present Israel's policies to a global audience.