American-funded campaign to put Netanyahu into power complains that a campaign to remove Netanyahu from power received American funding.
By Shuki Tausig
Wednesday’s front page of Israel Hayom, the Netanyahu family mouthpiece owned and funded by American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, appeared seriously flustered by the news that a campaign to topple the prime minister enjoyed American resources.
According to the article in Israel Hayom, the U.S. State Department funded “One Voice” to the tune of $349,000 for politically neutral purposes, but that organization then made available the resources built with that money to another organization, V15, which used them for political purposes.
For comparison’s sake, Shlomo Ben-Zvi, Adelson’s former partner in establishing the free daily newspaper that preceded Israel Hayom, testified in a 2011 legal battle between the two men, that according to his calculations Israel Hayom loses roughly $3 million each month. (Hebrew) The newspaper has been in operation for nine years.
According to Haim Shine, the free-sheet’s resident political commentator, the fact that the U.S. government gave more than $300,000, which was indirectly used for a political campaign against Netanyahu, is proof that “President Obama used U.S.-government mechanisms against the election of Netanyahu and was neck-deep in an attempt to effect the results of an Israeli election?”. (Hebrew)
“The American administration treated Israel like a South American banana republic and thought it could use money to influence [Israeli] citizens’ opinions,” Shine continued.
I wonder what Shine would write if a Jewish American billionaire injected tens of millions of dollars into an Israeli political campaign to put Benjamin Netanyahu into power, tens of millions more to keep him there, and then distributed that campaign’s political materials to hundreds of thousands of Israelis every day.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated the amount of the State Department grant to One Voice in millions instead of thousands of dollars. The mistake was made in translation. We apologize for any confusion.
This article was first published in Hebron on The Seventh Eye.
