President Barack Obama and his allies were meddling in Israeli elections more so than previously thought, even using U.S. taxpayer money in an attempt to defeat Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Netanyahu's Republican strategist John McLaughlin.
"What was not well reported in the American media is that President Obama and his allies were playing in the election to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu," McLaughlin said in a Sunday interview on John Catsimatidis's "The Cats Roundtable" radio show in New York, reported The Hill.
"There was money moving that included taxpayer U.S. dollars, through non-profit organizations. And there were various liberal groups in the United States that were raising millions to fund a campaign called V15 against Prime Minister Netanyahu."
The effort to defeat Netanyahu was led by former Obama political operative Jeremy Bird, according to McLaughlin, who said that the V15 (Victory 15) ads hurt the prime minister in the polls. When Netanyahu's popularity rebounded following his speech to Congress earlier this month, the ads became even more critical, McLaughlin said.
According to Fox News, the V15 group was linked to the Washington-based nonprofit OneVoice Movement, which reportedly received $350,000 in grants from the State Department. V15 co-founder Nimrod Dweck told MSNBC that "not a single cent" of State Department of taxpayer money went to the group, calling such reports "false allegations" that have "nothing to do with reality."
During the Israeli elections, Netanyahu warned that Arab voters were being bussed en masse to polling stations in an attempt to defeat the prime minister.
McLaughlin claimed that there was indeed an effort "to organize the [Israeli] Arabs into one party and teach them about voter turnout," according to The Hill.
"The State Department people in the end of January, early February, expedited visas for [Israeli] Arab leaders to come to the United States to learn how to vote," McLaughlin added.
"There were people in the United States that were organizing them to vote in one party so they would help the left-of-center candidate, Herzog, that the Obama administration favored."
