Turns out Obama’s State Department funded a group in 2014 that used the infrastructure it built with our taxpayer money to campaign against Netanyahu in the 2015 elections. I know, shocking.
This was released in a Senate report this week on the issue:
JPOST – The Senate subcommittee on investigations published a report on Tuesday finding that OneVoice, an international non-profit organization once funded by the State Department, actively campaigned against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during Israel’s 2015 national parliamentary elections.
The “infrastructure and resources” of that campaign was built, in part, by funding from their State Department grant, the report found.
OneVoice entered headlines in 2015 after absorbing Victory15, an Israeli group that was actively campaigning against the Netanyahu government. One year earlier, OneVoice had successfully secured $300,000 in a grant from the State Department.
“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.”
“This pivot to electoral politics was consistent with a strategic plan developed by OneVoice leadership and emailed to State Department officials during the grant period. The State Department diplomat who received the plan told the Subcommittee that he never reviewed it,” the report stated.
The subcommittee found that OneVoice fully complied with the terms of its State Department grant, designing and executing “a grassroots and media campaign to promote public support for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations for the Department, as it said it would.”
So the short story is the Obama State Department gave OneVoice $300k to build a movement supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. OneVoice then used the infrastructure it built with the grant money to support Victory15, an anti-Netanyahu group trying to defeat him in the 2015 elections.
And the State Department completely ignored the fact that OneVoice told them they were going to get involved in the election. How convenient.