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Photo: AP
Ron Dermer; David Keyes
Photo: AP

CSC to investigate sexual allegations against Keyes

After Civil Service Commission announced that acts attributed to PM spokesman before joining civil service are outside its jurisdiction, anonymous claim by PMO employee prompts new investigation into matter.

The Civil Service Commission (CSC) announced Monday that it is examining whether there are any sexual harassment allegations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's foreign media spokesman, David Keyes, after becoming a civil servant.

 

 

"Insofar as such cases are identified, they will be examined from the disciplinary point of view," the official statement said.

 

Keyes announced last Thursday that he has decided to step down from his position in light of the multiple sexual harassment allegations being made against him. At least 14 women have come forward claiming Keyes sexually assaulted or behaved inappropriately with them.

 

David Keyes
David Keyes

 

The CSC further stated that "an examination of the media reporting in relation to David Keyes indicates that all the acts attributed to him by the various complainants are those allegedly committed by him when he lived in the United States and had not yet joined the civil service.

 

“Therefore, such matters are outside the jurisdiction of the commission and they should be clarified in the United States and in accordance with the laws that apply there," the statement read.

 

According to the Times of Israel news website, a new immigrant claimed that Keyes sexually harassed her after he had begun working in the Prime Minister's Office.

 

Except for the aforementioned woman, all the other claims against Keyes (reported by 13 different women) apparently occurred before he began working in the Prime Minister's Office.

 

As for Israel's Ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, who was warned about Keyes problematic behavior but did not report it to anyone in the Prime Minister's Office, the CSC said that it seems that after Keyes was already hired as a civil servant the matter was brought to Dermer’s attention, but only in a general, non-specific manner.

 

Ron Dermer (Photo: AP)
Ron Dermer (Photo: AP)

 

Dermer admitted receiving a call from an editor at the Wall Street Journal more than six months after Keyes took up his post in the Prime Minister's Office about the spokesman's alleged conduct before joining the office. 

 

The editor, Bret Stephens, warned Dermer that Keyes could harm women in the PMO. Dermer did not convey the information to the Prime Minister's Office and stated that if Stephens or someone else would have passed on any information regarding sexual assault or any other criminal act committed against women by any person in the Prime Minister's Office, regardless of when it occurred, he would immediately inform the Prime Minister's Office.

 

MK Karin Elharar (Yesh Atid), a member of the Knesset's Audit Committee, has demanded that Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately dismiss Ambassador Dermer from his position, since he has violated the provisions of the law that apply to him under the Prevention of Sexual Harassment Law, 1998.

 

According to Elharar, even if Ambassador Dermer believed that these were not criminal offenses, he was not authorized to determine the matter and was in any case clearly obligated to report it.

 

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 09.21.18, 16:52
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