US State Department Linked To Anti-Netanyahu Campaign

Jeremy Bird
Jeremy Bird

Update 12 July 2017: All of the suspicions raised in this Jan 2015 post were later confirmed through Senate hearings and other reporting. See this post from July 2016 for those details.

As we noted on Monday, Ha’aretz reported that Jeremy Bird, whose previous titles include National Field Director for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, Deputy National Director of Organizing for America, and South Carolina Primary Field Director and Ohio General Election Director for Obama’s 2008 campaign, will now be running an anti-Netanyahu campaign out of Tel Aviv through the group V15. The Washington Free Beacon is now reporting that OneVoice, a group that partners with Bird’s V15 in Israel, has received grants from the US State Department.

OneVoice said in a press release on Tuesday that it is teaming up with V15 because Israel “need[s] a prime minister and a government who will be responsive to the people.”

OneVoice International received two grants from the U.S. State Department over the past year, and lists the agency as a “partner” on its website. [OneVoice development and grants officer Christina] Taler said the group is not using this money for its Israeli election-related efforts.

“No government funding has gone toward any of the activities we’re doing right now whatsoever,” she said.

Taler said the group used the State Department grants to “build public campaign support for the [Israeli-Palestinian] negotiations” spearheaded by Secretary of State John Kerry last spring.

The claim that State Department funds are being used to support negotiations, but not for the V15 campaign, is simply not credible. Dollars and staffing within an organization are fungible, and funding that may be earmarked for one purpose in an organization will simply free up the organization’s funding for a different purpose. Staffers are not likely to firewall themselves off from each other to ensure that their work only supports one purpose and not another.

Obama Shoes
US President Barack Obama

Obama and his supporters are basically launching a two-pronged attack on the Israeli Prime Minister: they are attacking him in the US using well-worn antisemitic stereotypes and smears like those made earlier this week by Congressman John Yarmuth, and they are attacking him in Israel by sending US tax dollars to a group that is actively working to unseat him. Meanwhile, they whine that a fully transparent speaking engagement is a breach of protocol, and complain that it is Netanyahu who is interfering in US domestic politics.

14 thoughts on “US State Department Linked To Anti-Netanyahu Campaign”

  1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

    ” prime minister and a government who will be responsive to the people.”
    Great idea! So —
    – No more building freezes, even unoffical ones?
    – No more releasing hundreds of convicted terrorists for no reason, just to please the US?
    – No more police coddling of terrorists, or reporting terror crimes as mere non-political street crime and random violence?
    – No more criminal prosecutions or military discipline for police and soldiers who do their jobs defending themselves, their comrades and civilians against violence?
    – No more arrest, prosecution, or disarming of people who defend themselves and their families against terrorists?
    – No more administrative detention of people who don’t toe the international line about the peaceful intentions of the country’s enemies?
    – No more treating every juvenile act of graffiti as if it were a firebomb attack or a stabbing?
    I like it. I don’t know which candidate is going to deliver all that, but I’m surprised the US State Department is going to fund him. Or her, since the only ones who come to mind are Caroline Glick (zolt zein gezunt und shtark) and Ayelet Shaked.

    1. The Kach Party is illegal in Israel. Jewish Home is kind of like Kach-lite so you might want to go with them. Why not go whole-hog (excuse the expression) and create a theocracy and do away with all these inconveniences of a democratic state altogether?

      1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

        Jewish Home is nothing like Kach, except in the eyes of Haaretz. But please explain what you find racist in my proposals. And I’m not aware of anything in my proposals that was in the Kach platform, or that the other parties don’t pay lip service to. (With the exception of Labor, who originated the settlement policy and were for letting Jews live where they aren’t wanted before they were against it.)

        Glick, by the way, has been offered a spot on the Likkud ticket, not Jewish Home.

        Nothing in my post proposed a theocracy. Find one reference to religion in my proposals, please. Morever, my proposals propose enforcing the laws rather than ignoring them. Perhaps you find it undemocratic if laws in the Jewish state are not disregarded for the benefit of those who want to murder Jews.

        Your constant assumption that anyone to the right of Fidel Castro must necessarily be racist is getting really tiresome.

        I don’t normally flag posts from regulars on this site, but I flagged yours because I found the innuendo uncalled for, over the top, and personallly offensive. And more suited to Huffpo, New Republic or Guardian than a Zionist site.

        Sorry, Jim — the whole idea of a Jewish state was to avoid having to ask people like you for permission to defend ourselves from people who want to murder us.

        1. You sound very much like Naftali Bennett, thus the reference to Jewish Home. If you harbor no irrational, intense hatred for Arabs then the mistake was mine and I apologize for connecting your views with those of the Kach Party. I didn’t mention Caroline Glick at all, so I’m not sure where that is coming from.

      2. Jim you come from Iowa; Jewish Home = Kach-lite! Really? Perhaps It’s time for you to make Aliya if only to get your facts right. “Jim from Israel” even has ring to it. And by the way since you mentioned it, what great fruit has American democracy borne in recent years? A President without a birth-certificate who has named himself “Hussein”? The invasion of Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood? And you talk to us about “Theocracy”?

        1. We’ve got the Tea Party, the Family Research Council, Citizen’s United, Democrats who want the party to be a paler version of the Republican Party and a whole lot more to deal with here, and yet I do worry about the long-term survival of Israel as a secular democracy with close ties to America. Maybe I overreact at times, but it comes from a place of caring and wanting what’s best for Israelis.

          1. Jim – I too “worry about the long-term survival of Israel as a secular democracy with close ties to America.” But what with Obama initiated hajira into the USA, I “worry more about the long-term survival of America as a secular democracy with close ties to Israel.”

            1. I appreciate your concern about us here in America. It would have been nice if you had sent a “get well” card, though.

              1. Dear Jim “get well” soon. Hopefully after your cure, you, America and consequently us, will be all the better for it.

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