Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party is weighing the establishment of a governmental inquiry committee to investigate the funding behind the movement protesting judicial reforms.
The move comes days after Likud issued a statement citing what it called “astonishing revelations” contained in an official document recently published by the US Congress.
According to the Likud, the document confirms longstanding suspicions that former US president Joe Biden's administration transferred close to $1 billion to left-wing NGOs operating in Israel, allegedly with the goal of destabilizing the right-wing government.
“The document exposes that the same entities funding political left-wing organizations in Israel also channeled money, through intermediary bodies, to groups affiliated with Hamas and to international campaigns targeting the State of Israel,” Likud said. “What we’ve been saying for years is no longer a theory or conspiracy; it is now a documented fact, backed by official records.”
Funds listed didn't originate from US gov't, did not reach organizations in question
The data provided by the report, however, show that the maximum government funds that reached the protest groups in question were less than $600,000.
The report listed a large number of anti-judicial reform organizations and cited various funding sources. However, a large majority of the funds listed in the report either did not originate from the US government or did not reach the organizations in question.
The report noted that Congress’s Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Foreign Affairs on March 26 sent letters to six US and Israeli nongovernmental organizations to request “documents related to any grants, cooperative agreements, or other awards received from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) or State Department.”
Eliav Breuer contributed to this report.