Funding Behind V15 Revealed
The V15 group working to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in the upcoming election has confirmed to this reporter that it is primarily financed by an American billionaire and a Mexican entrepreneur who is a U.S. resident.
V15, short for Victory 2015, attracted U.S. media attention after it hired 270 Strategies, a consulting firm whose senior leadership is comprised mostly of former top staffers for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
Uri Wollman, V15′s spokesman, conceded his organization’s ballooning infrastructure is funded primarily by three private philanthropists:
- S. Daniel Abraham, the billionaire founder of the Slim Fast food line. Abraham is a major donor to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Foundation.
- Daniel Lubetzky, a social entrepreneur whose OneVoice Movement is partnered with V15.
- Alon Kastiel, a Tel Aviv-based businessman and owner of multiple local venues, including bars, clubs and hotels.
The admission confirms charges by Netanyahu’s Likud Party, which earlier called on Israel’s Central Elections Committee to outlaw V15′s activities to “ensure the integrity of the election.” The Likud Party accused V15 of violating campaign finance law by accepting foreign contributions, with Likud lawyer David Shimron claiming Abraham and Lubetzky were behind the group’s funding.
Lubetzky is the CEO and Founder of KIND Healthy Snacks and the KIND Movement. He is also founder of PeaceWorks Inc. and the PeaceWorks Foundation’s OneVoice Movement.
Lubetzky’s involvement in financing V15 is unsurprising since his OneVoice movement is openly partnered with V15, while V15 is utilizing OneVoice’s Tel Aviv office space as its headquarters, as WorldNetDaily reported.
Abraham’s financing of V15 was until now unconfirmed. The Palm Beach billionaire is a known contributor to leftist political parties in Israel. He is also a backer of the so-called two-state solution through the Washington-based Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation, which he co-founded.
An Interview With The Man Trying To Topple Netanyahu
In a sit-down interview at his campaign headquarters down an alley and behind a building off of the posh Rothschild Boulevard in central Tel Aviv, Nimrod Dweck, founder of a new voter mobilization effort making waves here, did not disguise his group’s ultimate agenda.
“We want to bring a change in the political sphere so that the center and left parties will form the next coalition. That’s our goal,” he said
Dweck’s candid statement about working to form a center-left coalition, meaning a ruling coalition in opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-leaning Likud Party, stands in contrast to recent attempts by V15 to paint itself as nonpartisan.
Asked directly whether his group’s intention is to topple Netanyahu, Dweck replied, “Our goal is to do change.”
Dweck said V15 aims to mobilize voters who are “more likely to support our cause,” including by getting left-leaning young residents of central Israel to sign pledge cards to vote for “change” in the upcoming election.
“We’re calling homes, going door-to-door in central Israel in places we marked as potential voters of the center-left,” he said.
If Dweck’s call for “change” sounds familiar to a U.S. audience, that may be because the chief consultant for the anti-Netanyahu election effort is 270 Strategies founder and ex-Obama campaign staffer Jeremy Bird.
Bird served as a data analyst and a deputy director for Obama’s 2008 campaign and was the national field director for the president’s massive re-election machine.
Dweck told this reporter that Bird’s organizing skills are central to designing the evolving V15 battle plan.
“Israelis don’t know how to run field [operations] as Americans [do], and that was the major contribution of Jeremy’s team,” he said.
270 Strategies’ team of 45 staffers includes 16 members who worked directly for Obama’s campaigns. Most of the former Obama staffers hold the senior posts at the firm. Others worked for the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, or grassroots groups involved in progressive efforts, including a group to enroll Americans in Obamacare.