David Keyes

David Keyes was born in 1984 in Los Angeles

David Keyes was born in 1984 in Los Angeles, California. He attended Shalhevet High School and University High School. As a youth he played competitive tennis in California, trained with Andre Agassi and hoped to turn professional.

He earned a degree with honors in Middle Eastern studies at UCLA, where he ran a group called Students Against Dictators. He did research at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in 2004 and interned at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 2005. In 2006 he studied Arabic in Cairo.

After immigrating to Israel, he served in the Strategic Division of the IDF. He also completed a master's degree in diplomacy at Tel Aviv University.

While working for Natan Sharansky, he founded CyberDissidents.org, a platform for democratic online activists in the Middle East. In 2010 he helped Robert L. Bernstein set up Advancing Human Rights, and in 2011 he ran a campaign against the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia. In 2012 he became head of Movements.org.

From 2016 to 2018 he was foreign media advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu. In December 2018 he resigned after allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied.