English-language spokesman Eylon Levy, suspended by Prime Minister’s Office, formally steps down
Eylon Levy, the resonant English-language spokesman at the Prime Minister’s Office who was suspended three weeks ago, has formally stepped down from the role.
Levy, who was suspended until further notice after the British Foreign Office complained about a tweet in which he responded to remarks by Foreign Secretary David Cameron concerning aid to Gaza, has changed his bio on X to “Former Israeli Government Spokesman” and tweeted: “You don’t need to be a spokesperson to speak up for Israel.” In a Hebrew tweet, he writes that he and his public diplomacy team are embarking on “an independent path.”
In an interview with The Times of Israel published earlier today, Levy, 32, said he found it “difficult to believe” that his suspension was “really about the tweet to David Cameron because I tweeted government policy and facts.”
Levy, a former adviser to President Isaac Herzog, also said: “I definitely think that one of the lessons that will have to be learned for the next war — please God, there won’t be a next war — is improving our response to crisis communications.”
Asked in the interview about reports that Sara Netanyahu had sought his ouster because last year he was among the hundreds of thousands of people who demonstrated against the judicial overhaul, Levy told The Times of Israel: “The closest I’ve ever come to the prime minister’s wife was on ‘Eretz Nehederet’. I’ve never met her. I’ve never spoken to her. When I saw that report on Channel 12 [in late January claiming she wanted me fired], no one at the Prime Minister’s Office had ever mentioned anything about that. Before or after.”
He also said he had never met the prime minister.
When doing public diplomacy on behalf of Israel, Levy said in the interview, “The information architecture is completely stacked against us.”
“This really is a fight for the future of our country and the future of our people and what the world is going to look like for the Jewish people when Hamas and its propagandists at the United Nations have managed to convince so many people that Israel is guilty of genocide,” he said. “It’s been the wet dream of every anti-Semite since 1945 to haul the Jews up in the dock for the crimes of the Nazis. Now they’re doing it. We have to push back. We just don’t have the luxury to say, Um-Shmum, it will pass, things will revert to normal.
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“And that’s why I’m saying three weeks after this suspension till further notice, when no further notice has come, I think I’ve been doing a decent job making the case for Israel. I’m needed in the trenches. I want to continue giving interviews and speaking and influencing. If it’s not going to be as an official government spokesman, it’ll be as a former government spokesman.”
