Julia Salazar, a candidate in Democratic primary, tweets about alleged incident in 2013
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| Julia Salazar had earlier accused David Keyes of sexual assault in a Facebook post. He denies the allegations. |
Julia Salazar, a candidate for New York’s state senate, has accused the Israeli prime minister’s spokesman of sexually assaulting her.
David Keyes denied the accusation and said Salazar was “dishonest”.
Salazar, 27, said on Twitter that she had been informed her story was about to be reported by an unnamed news organisation in what appeared to be “an effort to cast doubt upon my and other women’s accusations against Keyes”.
“Before this runs, I want to come forward and confirm that I was a victim of sexual assault by David Keyes,” she wrote. “There’s a reason women don’t often come forward after a traumatic experience – because of the triggering and vicious responses that follow.”
Following the post, the Wall Street Journal reporter Shayndi Raice tweeted that she also had a “terrible encounter with David Keyes” before he joined Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, and claimed his “mistreatment of women was an open secret”.
“The man had absolutely no conception of the word ‘no’,” Raice wrote. “No matter how often I said no, he would not stop pushing himself on me. I was able to extricate myself quickly and it was a very brief and uncomfortable moment, but I knew as I walked away I had encountered a predator.”
I’m about to be outed as a survivor of sexual assault. Here is what I have to say about that: pic.twitter.com/WFjNhzBee8— Julia Salazar for State Senate (@SalazarSenate18) September 11, 2018
Allegations against Keyes, an American-born spokesman for foreign media who has worked for the Israeli prime minister since 2016, first surfaced shortly after he was appointed to the position.
Salazar, who was not named at the time in media reports, had said in a Facebook post that was later deleted that he sexually assaulted her in his Manhattan apartment in 2013 when she was studying at Columbia University.
“He tried to … make me do things I didn’t want to do,” a copy of the post said. “I resisted, tried to laugh it off, tried to be polite,” she said, adding she had told him no “at least a dozen times”.
“Eventually, after I insisted on leaving his apartment repeatedly, he physically coerced me. After I submitted to him, he finally allowed me to leave. I remember going into the elevator and sobbing.”
Keyes denied the accusations at the time, saying “there was absolutely no coercion in our encounter”, according to Israel’s Army Radio.
Salazar, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, had worked as an organiser for the non-profit organisation Jews for Racial and Economic Justice before launching her campaign. She has a history of pro-Israel activism but has since become deeply critical. The DSA supports a boycott against Israel.
She is seeking to unseat the Brooklyn state senator, Martin Dilan, in a Democratic primary on Thursday, following a campaign that has attracted widespread attention.
On Tuesday, Keyes said: “This false accusation is made by someone who has proven to be repeatedly dishonest about her own life. This is yet another example of her dishonesty.”
The statement appeared to refer to a recent dispute over claims that Salazar has misrepresented her background, including her roots as a Latin American Jew and describing herself as an immigrant from a working-class background. She denies the accusations.
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