Obama administration tried to get Netanyahu defeated: GOP strategist

What was not well reported in the American media is that President Obama and his allies were playing in the election to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu," John McLaughlin claimed in a radio interview in New York broadcast on Sunday.
"There was money moving that included taxpayer US dollars, through non-profit organizations. And there were various liberal groups in the United States that were raising millions to fund a campaign called V15 against Prime Minister Netanyahu," added McLaughlin, a pollster for Netanyahu's Likud party.
Netanyahu clinched a divisive victory in Tuesday’s Israeli election. His rightwing Likud party won 30 of the 120 seats in parliament, against 24 for rivals in the center-left Zionist Union.
Netanyahu made opposition to nuclear negotiations with Iran a centerpiece of his reelection campaign. He also rejected the idea of a Palestinian state, which has been a key element of US foreign policy.
The White House has said that the US would reevaluate its approach based on Netanyahu's “change in his position”. It also raised the prospect of removing critical US diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations Security Council.
Meanwhile, Obama has warned Netanyahu over his opposition to a Palestinian state and for making racist comments about Arabs living in the occupied territories.
On Thursday, Obama told Netanyahu on phone that Washington will "reassess" its ties with Tel Aviv after the Israeli premier rejected the idea of a Palestinian state during his election campaign.
In a videotaped interview with The Huffington Post released on Saturday, the US president condemned Netanyahu over a Facebook posting in which he warned that Arabs living in the occupied territories were going to the polls “in droves,” an assertion widely interpreted as racist and meant to suppress voters.
Republican strategist McLaughlin said the Obama administration tried "to organize the [Israeli] Arabs into one party and teach them about voter turnout."
"The State Department people in the end of January, early February, expedited visas for [Israeli] Arab leaders to come to the United States to learn how to vote," McLaughlin said.
"There were people in the United States that were organizing them to vote in one party so they would help the left-of-center candidate, Herzog, that the Obama administration favored," he added.
In an interveiw with Press TV on Sunday, American investigative journalist Wayne Madsen said Netanyahu was never committed to the Middle East peace process.
“He was lying about it, saying that he wanted the two-state solution while he kept expanding settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem (al-Quds),” he said.
More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank including East al-Quds in 1967.
Many countries and the United Nations consider the Israeli settlements to be illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are thus subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.