Likud MKs Accuse Herzog Of Funding Violations

With six weeks left in the Israeli election campaign, Likud MKs went on the offensive Sunday, alleging that their main rival, Zionist Camp, has broken campaign finance laws by accepting money from foreign sources, The Jerusalem Post reported.

At a press conference in Tel Aviv, deputy ministers Tzipi Hotovely and Ophir Akunis, MKs Miri Regev and Yariv Levin, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s lawyer David Shimron charged that oppposition leader Isaac Herzog has been receiving funds from V15, an organization working to bring down the government, which has received funding from non-Israeli citizens S. Daniel Abraham and Daniel Lubetzky.

Herzog categorically denied the allegations on Sunday night, saying that they are “baseless, without any facts, one big lie.” He said the Likud is simply afraid of losing power after six years of running the government.

V15’s funding, they said, comes from One Voice, which in turn gets money from various  foreign governments, organizations, and non-Israeli citizens. They named Zionist Union candidates Yoel Hasson and Danny Atar and former Labor MKs Ephraim Sneh and Colette Avital, as members of One Voice’s advisory board.

OneVoice denied that either Hasson or Atar had ever been board members of the organization.
Shimron said party funding laws restrict donations to NIS 1000, and only from Israeli citizens.

Hotovely said the Likud has submitted a request to the national election committee for a temporary injunction against V15 “so it will be known that a government cannot be toppled by illegitimate means.”

This article appeared in print on page 7 of the February 2nd, 2015 edition of Hamodia.