More Meddling In Israeli Elections
A State Department-financed non-profit based in Israel is currently engaged in a major effort to get young Arab citizens to the voting booths in the upcoming Israeli elections.
In an interview with this reporter, Amnon Beeri-Sulitzeanu, co-executive director of the Abraham Fund, maintained that his group’s voter participation activities are entirely non-partisan and that his organization does not endorse any political party.
Israeli election trends, however, have long demonstrated that Arab citizens vote overwhelmingly for left-wing and Arab parties. Any increase in the Arab vote would clearly come at the expense of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party as well as other right-wing parties.
Following the country’s most recent parliamentary election in 2013, Arab lawmakers complained that a higher Arab voter turnout could have tipped the election toward the Left and defeated Netanyahu.
The Abraham Fund is now working hard to encourage Arab participation in the Israeli elections. Last week it announced the launch of a “Broad-Based Action Plan to Increase the Participation of Arab Citizens in upcoming Elections for Knesset.”
Continued the release: “The Abraham Fund focuses its plans on a number of areas including running conferences for Arab students in colleges and launching a media and advertising campaign to persuade the Arab public to participate in the democratic process and vote in the elections.”
Beeri-Sulitzeanu said much of his group’s activities are aimed at younger Arab voters.
In 2010, the State Department provided the Abraham Fund a $999,715 three-year grant for an education initiative in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Education. Another part of the grant was designated to a project with the Israeli security services aimed at fostering closer Arab-Jewish ties.
Beeri-Sulitzeanu said the U.S. government funds are not being utilized for the voter-participation drive. He acknowledged, however, that “some [money for the project] comes from our core funding at the Abraham Fund.”
“Since our workers are getting paid anyway, some of their job is dedicated to the vote project,” he said.
A source close to the Abraham Fund said the financing for the voter participation project came in large part from private wealthy American donors.
The same source said the voter-participation drive was encouraged by staffers from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.
Asked if there was truth to the claim of U.S. Embassy encouragement, Beeri-Sulitzeanu simply responded, “No.”
The Abraham Fund is the second State Department-financed non-profit to engage in voter-organizing activities.
The other group, 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.
The V15 organization has partnered with OneVoice, a U.S.-UK non-profit, for its get-out-the-vote-organizing drive aimed at replacing Netanyahu’s government with a center-left coalition.
V15′s headquarters is actually the offices of “OneVoice,” which bills itself as an “international grassroots movement that amplifies the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians.”
OneVoice is reportedly sponsored by scores of nonprofits and received two grants in the past year from the U.S. State Department. The State Department is also listed as a partner of OneVoice on the group’s website. OneVoice development and grants officer Christina Taler told reporters “no government funding” has gone toward the V15 voter mobilization effort.
ISIS Possibly Six Times Larger Than CIA Estimate
The Islamic State and its extremist allies currently boast an army estimated by Egypt to consist of about 180,000 Islamist fighters.
An Egyptian intelligence document, the contents of which were obtained by KleinOnline, warns that while the U.S. has been attempting to maintain a coalition to fight ISIS, the Islamic terrorist organization has itself been hard at work building a sustainable coalition of jihadist gunmen.
The 180,000 figure is six times greater than a CIA estimate from last September, which placed the number of ISIS fighters at between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters.
According to Egypt, ISIS has created an umbrella army with the Taliban, Al Shabab, and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and local jihadist groups from Yemen, Mali, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and the Egyptian Sinai.
Egypt is warning this ISIS-allied army is preparing for a major insurgency in numerous countries by this spring or summer.
American Student Organization Calls For Divestment From U.S. And Israel
A resolution approved by the University of California Student Association board calling for financial divestment from the United States highlights the penetration of professional radical leftist groups in U.S. academia.
UC’s Student Association represents all 233,000 students enrolled within the UC system’s 10 campuses.
The “Resolution Toward Socially Responsible Investment at the University of California” passed with an overwhelming majority vote of 11-1-3, reports CollegeFix.com.
The resolution cited U.S. drone strikes overseas, complained about illegal immigrants being held in detention centers, and accused the police and federal prison system of racial and ethnic discrimination.
It called for UC system leaders to divest from the U.S. A separate resolution, which passed with a 9-1-6 vote on Sunday, singled out Israel for divestment.
Cornell University law Professor William Jacobson said the anti-U.S. resolution made the UC Student Association looked like “fools.”
“The U. Cal. student government has proven a point I’ve made repeatedly in terms of the academic boycott: If you are going to boycott Israel, then you need to apply those standards to the whole world, which will result in boycotting yourselves.”
“I’m not glad that the Israel divestment passed,” he wrote at Legal Insurrection publication, “but at least it passed combined with a resolution which made the anti-Israel students and U. Cal student government look like fools.”
This column’s review of the leadership of UC Student Association’s student board, a student-run, student-led organization, finds all three of its officers are associated with the United States Student Association.
The USSA is a radical anti-war group that calls for open borders and divestment from Israel and opposes U.S military intervention oversees.
Discover The Networks documents that USSA is a member the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, which, writes DTN, “is led by Leslie Cagan, a longtime committed socialist who aligns her politics with those of Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba.”
USSA calls itself the “oldest and largest national student association.” It lobbies heavily for government benefits to extend to illegal aliens and is a sponsoring organization of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride Coalition, which DTN labels as “an open-borders entity that seeks to secure amnesty and full civil rights and liberties for illegal immigrants.”
The USSA declaration rejects any “military action our government has taken since September 11,” and purports that “destroying the resources of an already impoverished nation does not promote peace and justice.”