Earlier this week, CNAV reported on former Obama campaign staff setting up shop in Israel to campaign against Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party in the Israeli elections. Those elections will take place on March 17 (Gregorian calendar). Contrary to popular left-wing belief in the USA, the first report came not from Aaron Klein at WND, but from Roy Arad at Haaretz. Now comes a new rumor that the group who hired these former Obama employees receives some kind of U.S. taxpayer stipendiary support. And a U.S. Senator wants to know how much support they get, and who authorized it.

Israeli elections: latest from Israel

Roy Arad at Haaretz hasn’t dropped the story. Yesterday he filed a new report. Likud Party leaders have asked the Central Elections Committee to bar the V15 (“Victory in 2015”) organization from campaigning. V15 were already doing a semantic dance to avoid breaking Israeli elections campaign law. Likud thinks V15 just made a misstep.

Flag of Israel

This means: foreign (to Israel) campaign strategists and other senior campaign workers seem to have mixed into Israeli elections. And Likud considers that a campaign threat.

Aaron Klein, on the day after he filed his first report, filed another. He interviewed the directors of V15. They denied “One Voice” still worked for Obama. Of course they would. (They probably knew Likud filed their petition with the Central Elections Committee that same day.) V15’s director, Nimrod Dweck, said only that One Voice recommended Bird’s firm as the best such firm in the industry.

But Klein did more than interview V15 officers. He describes how “One Voice” and V15 have all but blended their offices. He also checked the donors’ list for One Voice.

That list includes the United States Department of State. In fact, the State Department made two grants to One Voice. One Voice even lists the State Department as one of their partners.

U.S. taxpayers paying to influence Israeli elections?

An inquiring U.S. Senator wants to know.

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Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) followed up on that yesterday. Bob Unruh, also at WND, filed the report. Senator Cruz sent this letter to Secretary of State John Kerry. In it Cruz mentioned several damning items about the “One Voice” organization, how tight it is with V15, and the money it got from State. Specifically, Cruz asks:

1. How much money has One Voice gotten from State?
2. Who gave the go for those grants?
3. How does anyone at State track how One Voice spends that money?
4. How many times did One Voice get the funds, and on what dates?
5. Why exactly did One Voice get this money?
6. Can State be sure One Voice have spent no money on its “partnership with V15” or any other play to influence Israeli elections?
7. Did anyone at State even know One Voice partnered with V15, or planned to, before One Voice got the funds?
8. Have One Voice broken their 501(c)(3) status and should they now lose it?

Cruz called One Voice “a U.S. taxpayer-funded 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.” Liberals persistently complain, at least of conservatives, that any tax exemption, and especially a tax deduction for donors, constitutes taxpayer funding. But Cruz probably had in mind the Department of State cutting checks to One Voice. In any event, Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code covers public, apolitical charities. One Voice say they want to promote “the two-State solution” to the “Palestinian problem.” One could describe that mission as political. After all, the Israelis have a political alternative: annex Judea and Samaria (“The West Bank”) and possibly the Gaza Strip as well, and have done with it. But even if the “two-state solution” does not qualify as a political agenda, campaigning actively in Israeli elections certainly qualifies as a political act. Any public charity that does that, risks losing its status. Or at least, it does if it campaigns for a conservative candidate in an election.

Twitchy.com has its own page on the controversy. Twitter account holders and other commenters have reacted in fury to the news. They also have taken time to debate the White House’ attitude when Speaker of the House John Boehner invited Netanyahu to speak to Congress on March 3. Netanyahu has accepted.

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