A former Obama campaign strategist is reportedly working with a team of Obama campaign operatives in Israel to defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming Israeli elections scheduled for March 17.
The Tel Aviv-based Victory 2015, or V15, is allegedly being helped by Jeremy Bird, Obama campaign's national field director in 2012, and three other U.S. consultants to adopt American campaign methodologies like those that won President Barack Obama the White House in 2008 and 2012, Breitbart reported. The team reportedly arrived in Israel on Tuesday.
"Obama won't meet Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington when he addresses the Joint Houses of Congress in March because of Netanyahu's visit's proximity to the Israeli elections. And Obama, of course believes in protocol and propriety which is why he won't get involved," Jerusalem Post columnist and putative Knesset candidate Caroline Glick reported on her Facebook page.
Yet, "he's just sending his 2012 field campaign manager to Israel to run a campaign to defeat Netanyahu," she notes.
Even though V15 have not publicly backed any particular party, they want to "simply replace the government," especially Netanyahu, who has a famously bitter relationship with Obama.
And to make that happen, they have hired Bird, one of the founders of 270 Strategies, which combines grassroots organizing with online engagement and digital know-how for campaigns, as their "secret campaign weapon," according to anti-Netanyahu, left wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Since Israel is ideal for door-to-door campaigning due to the small size of the country, V15 plans to recruit tens of thousands of volunteers to campaign door-to-door, covering between 150,000 to 1 million homes, according to TheBlaze.
With large number of political parties and high voter turnout, Bird believes it's possible to talk with enough people to change the government, Nimrod Dweck, one of the organizers of V15, said, adding that Bird has helped them garner a large response amid dissatisfaction with Netanyahu.
"The response is great because there is great disgust," Dweck told Haaretz. "Almost 2,000 people offered to volunteer. We will go to homes and we will win. Bird's team helps direct the wave of enthusiasm so it doesn't turn into loud noise that disappears but rather into a wave of change. The work with the research team that Bird brought has really ignited sparks."
The campaign is partnered with and funded by an organization called "OneVoice," which describes itself as a "grassroots movement" to promote a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the 1967 borders.
Meanwhile the Obama administration, who is known to meddle in foreign elections, has aggressively worked over the years to defeat allied leaders it has not liked and to elect or re-elect foreign leaders it does like, according to the Times of Israel.
