Yehuda Weinstein
Yehuda WeinsteinYonatan Sindel/Flash90

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein will not issue an injunction against the activities of the V15 organization, based on a complaint by the Likud that the group is illegally funded by foreign organizations and agents. Weinstein said that most of the activities listed in the Likud's complaints do not fall under the aegis of the law against foreign intervention in Israeli elections that the Likud cited in its complaint.

In a dramatic press conference several weeks ago, Likud MKs presented what they said was evidence of V15's collusion with non-Israeli interests to swing the election toward Labor-Hatnua Chairpersons Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni, Netanyahu's rivals for the prime minister's seat.

According to Likud MKs who spoke at the press conference, the project is headed by several former Obama campaign managers aimed at unseating Likud and installing a left-wing government in its place.

According to reports, V15 is led by, among others, Jeremy Bird, who was the national field director for US President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. V15 is also backed by a the leftist One Voice organization, which receives money from the New Israel Fund, which raises most of its money in the US and Europe.

According to the reports, V15's job is to recruit tens of thousands of volunteers for house-to-house canvassing, knocking on anywhere between 150,000 and 1 million doors — a method that was effective in Obama’s first presidential campaign, in particular.

That, said Weinstein, was not necessarily against the law, because V15 was not an official campaign group, and because the volunteers who are knocking on doors are not getting paid, and are not hiding anything from voters, or the Central Elections Committee.

With that, Weinstein said, a police complaint filed on the same matter would be considered independently of the complaint to the Committee.