Stunning: State Department Sent Tax Dollars to Help Unseat Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu

This week, the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs’ Subcommittee on Investigations released a stunning report about the Obama Administration’s State Department sending hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars to an organization that worked to unseat Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel.

The report’s Executive Summary has more details:

On December 2, 2014, at the urging of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Knesset voted to schedule new national parliamentary elections for March 2015. Within weeks, an international organization known as the OneVoice Movement absorbed and funded an Israeli group named Victory15 or “V15” and launched a multimillion-dollar grassroots campaign in Israel. The campaign’s goal was to elect “anybody but Bibi [Netanyahu]” by mobilizing center-left voters. The Israeli and Palestinian arms of OneVoice, OneVoice Israel (OVI), and OneVoice Palestine (OVP), received more than $300,000 in grants from the U.S. State Department to support peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine over a 14-month grant period ending in November 2014. In February 2015, the Subcommittee initiated an inquiry concerning the connection, if any, between OneVoice’s State Department grant funds and V15’s political activity. This report outlines the findings from that investigation. [citations omitted]

This is unbelievable and unacceptable.  But unfortunately, it’s just the latest in a long line of attempts by the Obama Administration to weaken Israel on the world’s stage.

And now, we have evidence that your tax dollars were used by an organization to elect “anybody but” Netanyahu as Israel’s Prime Minister.

While the report points out that no grant funds were used to influence the 2015 Israeli elections, this fundamentally misunderstands the fungibility of money, something the left has done for years as it claims no money goes to fund abortions while hundreds of millions of dollars go every year to organizations that perform hundreds of thousands of abortions annually.

But the report is clear:

Soon after the grant period ended, however, OneVoice used the campaign infrastructure and resources built, in part, with State Department grants funds to support V15. In service of V15, OneVoice deployed its social media platform, which more than doubled during the State Department grant period; used its database of voter contact information, including email addresses, which OVI expanded during the grant period; and enlisted its network of trained activists, many of whom were recruited or trained under the grant, to support and recruit for V15.

We know that President Obama has attempted to undercut Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu repeatedly throughout his time in office – even going so far to snub him from the White House when he was invited to address Congress.  Now we know his actions went further, actually funding (with your tax dollars) efforts to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu in free and fair elections.

It’s blatantly undemocratic.

It’s also dangerous for our greatest ally in the Middle East and our own security around the globe.  Once again, as I discuss in my new book coming out this September – Unholy Alliance – our enemies no longer fear us and our allies don’t trust us.

At the ACLJ, we’re working to defend Israel even if the Obama Administration doesn’t. That’s why we’re preparing a FOIA request to the State Department demanding details on how our taxpayer money was used to build an infrastructure used to campaign against PM Netanyahu in our ally’s election. We have filed numerous FOIA requests to demand accountability and transparency from the most corrupt Administration in modern American history. We’ve even taken the State Department to federal court for its lies and cover-up about its nuclear negotiations with Iran.

We also continue to defend Israel here in the United States and around the globe against the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement whose goal is to delegitimize Israel and destroy its people.  I’ve taken that fight to the United Nations, and our attorneys are working on college campuses and with state and local governments to send one clear message.

We will always stand with Israel.