Two U.S. House committees are investigating the former Biden administration for allegedly funding protests aimed at ousting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and more investigations may be coming soon.
As Breitbart News noted in 2023, the U.S. State Department had been “funding a left-wing organization in Israel that is helping to promote anti-government protest aimed at bringing down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his judicial reforms.” That report, in turn, cited the Washington Free Beacon, which reported that U.S. taxpayer funds had been granted to the Movement for Quality Government (MQG), which had helped lead the fight against Netanyahu in the courts and in the streets, with the clear goal of ousting him.
Now, Liel Leibovitz writes in the Wall Street Journal, two separate House committees are probing further:
As the Journal’s editorial board reports, the Biden State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development transferred tens of millions of dollars, directly and indirectly, to Israeli nongovernmental organizations working to topple the Netanyahu government. Two House committees are investigating how U.S. funding to six of these groups was used. Which is just as well, as federal funding of foreign organizations can be a thorny thicket to navigate, requiring investigators to try to ascertain precisely what the funds were designated for and whether they were properly applied. But publicly available records tell a suspicious story: Many of the organizations that received funding from the Biden administration also played a key role in the movement to unseat Mr. Netanyahu.
Take Itach Ma’aki, or Women Lawyers for Social Justice. The group received more than $8,000 from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in 2023, designated for a development project in the Negev, a desert in the south of Israel. That same year, the group helped replicate America’s “Handmaid’s Tale” protests in Israel. Photo Israel, an organization dedicated to “the promotion of the art of photography in Israel and abroad,” received nearly $80,000 from USAID in 2024 for a photography program it says motivates young Israelis to “social and community activism.” Photo Israel’s recent activities include “The Protest From Heaven,” an exhibition celebrating the anti-Netanyahu movement.
Sikkuy-Aufoq, a nonprofit working for “equality and partnership” between Jews and Arabs, received more than $1 million in State Department funds between 2021 and 2024. Tax documents claimed the organization used these funds to strengthen local authorities and reduce crime in Arab communities. Sikkuy-Aufoq has organized demonstrations and lawsuits targeting Mr. Netanyahu’s government and its policies.
This was not the first attempt by a Democrat administration to interfere in Israel’s politics. As Breitbart News has noted, in 2015 “the State Department spent $465,000 on a group called OneVoice, which then joined a group called Victory 15 (V15) and worked to defeat Netanyahu and his Likud Party in Israel’s elections.”
Breitbart News has reached out to staffers in the Senate to determine if the upper house will also be conducting its own investigations and oversight of Biden administration spending on ousting Netanyahu.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
