As we noted last week, the US State Department-funded group OneVoice is working with former Obama-campaign strategist Jeremy Bird to oust Prime Minister Netanyahu. Alana Goodman at the Washington Free Beacon has now revealed evidence that American funded efforts to influence the outcome of the Israeli election are even more widespread than originally known:
A coalition of US-funded progressive groups has planned a massive get-out-the-vote effort to influence the Israeli elections, targeting communities that are most likely to vote against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-leaning Likud Party, according to a confidential strategy memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The US-based 501(c)(3) group Ameinu sent out the fundraising proposal for the campaign to American donors on Dec. 17, 2014.
The $3 million initiative is described in the document as “a massive, non-partisan Get Out The Vote (GOTV) campaign targeting selected demographic and geographic segments of Israeli society.”
The targeted groups listed in the memo—young secular Israelis, low-income secular Jews, and Arab Israelis—are communities that traditionally oppose right-leaning parties such as Likud.
There is nothing wrong with an effort to increase voter turnout, as long as such an effort does not discriminate. An effort to increase voter turnout only in specific demographics that have a tendency to vote in a certain direction, however, is plainly partisan. And once again, former Obama campaign operatives are involved. Ameinu’s proposal reads:
We are already in touch with a highly talented combination of knowledgeable Israeli professionals and American experts with experience in similar recent operations, including the Obama presidential campaign.
As I wrote earlier, the notion that such widespread efforts are being undertaken without President Obama’s knowledge and blessing is just not plausible.
Ameinu’s proposal even includes a provision for driving people to voting booths:
Plan and conduct an operational plan for elections day logistics “Leave No Voter Behind” including: 1. Transportation to voting centers 2. Information Center 3. Data transmission 4. Activating Influencers
And what, exactly, does “Activating Influencers” mean?
Like OneVoice, Ameinu is a tax-exempt group under Chapter 501(c)(3). This means that functionally, contributions to Ameinu are subsidized by US taxpayers.
The combination of these efforts is all the more shocking when compared with President Obama’s attitude towards the election of Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi in Egypt. There was no appearance of interference at the time of Morsi’s election. Indeed, President Obama congratulated him on his victory and subsequently continued to treat his government respectfully, even as that government looked the other way while the country’s Christians were violently attacked and tried to lower the legal age of marriage for girls to 13. In that case, President Obama continued to respect the outcome of the elections that had brought Morsi to power, flawed as those elections may have been.
Meanwhile, flunkies of the Obama administration continue the operation to discredit Netanyahu in the US, with the New York Times’s Tom Friedman determined to keep the artificially manufactured speech-gate saga in the headlines two weeks after the spat first broke out, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi saying that some Democratic members of Congress might be “too busy” to attend Netanyahu’s speech in March. Pelosi should note that any Democrat who chooses not to attend will give the impression of simply being closed to arguments with which they are predisposed to disagree, and of not giving an opposing point of view a fair hearing.
