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A total of 12 women have accused a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of inappropriate behavior, The Times of Israel reported. The newspaper reported on the allegations after New York state Senate candidate Julia Salazar on Tuesday accused David Keyes of sexually assaulting her. The Times reports that 10 women recalled “unpleasant encounters” with Keyes, and that “several men” corroborated some of their accounts. One of the women accused Keyes of “physically aggressive” behavior that could be classified as assault, alleging that he forcibly kissed her, touched her, and attempted to take off her clothes in his apartment even after she rejected him. The other accusers described Keyes’ behavior, which allegedly occurred before he became Netanyahu’s spokesman to foreign media, as “aggressive, offensive, overly flirtatious or otherwise inappropriate.” He allegedly could not be left alone with female interns because he made them “uncomfortable.”
In a statement, Keyes told the Times that “all of the accusations are deeply misleading and many of them are categorically false.” After Salazar accused Keyes of sexual assault on Twitter Tuesday, Wall Street Journal reporter Shayndi Raice said she had a “terrible encounter” with him, as well. “No matter how often I said no, he would not stop pushing himself on me… I knew as I walked away I had encountered a predator,” Raice wrote.