PM to tap US-born human rights activist as new spokesman

Before David Keyes started ‘punking’ Iranian and Saudi officials, New York Times hailed him as a ‘pioneer in online activism’


Human rights activist David Keyes is to become Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new foreign media adviser and spokesperson, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Keyes, who was born in California and currently lives in New York, will replace Mark Regev, who has been appointed Israel’s new ambassador to London. The Prime Minister’s Office on Monday did not confirm Keyes’s appointment, which was first reported by The Jerusalem Post.

Keyes, who is fluent in Hebrew and Arabic, currently serves as the executive director of Advancing Human Rights, an umbrella human rights organization operating Movements.org, a crowdsourcing platform connecting dissidents in closed societies with those who might be able to help all over the globe.

He is also the director of Cyberdissidents.org, which he founded while working for former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky in Israel. The site “highlight the voices of democratic online activists in the Middle East,” he told The Times of Israel during an extensive interview last year....

...However, his style of activism is sometimes closer to Sacha Baron Cohen-like guerrilla theater than to quiet diplomacy. Last summer, Keyes traveled to Vienna at the time of the nuclear negotiations with Iran to mock Iranian diplomats for their country’s dismal human rights records. In a clip entitled “Punking Iran’s Nuclear Negotiators in Vienna,” he is seen approaching Iranian dignitaries on the streets of the Austrian capital.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-to-tap-us-born-human-rights-activist-as-new-spokesman/