While President Obama excused himself from meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month on the high-minded grounds that “. . . our general policy is, we don’t meet with any world leader two weeks before their election. . .”, a bipartisan Senate panel is probing whether the Obama administration’s tentacles have reached into that same upcoming Israeli election.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is delving into the Washington-based nonprofit “OneVoice Movement,” and its links to an anti-Netanyahu Israeli group “Victory 15” (V15). OneVoice, which describes itself as an “international grassroots movement that amplifies the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians, empowering them to propel their elected representatives toward the two-state solution,” was run until November, 2014, by Marc Ginsberg, whose Democratic bona fides include serving the Carter administration as a Middle East advisor, and the Clinton administration as ambassador to Morocco.  Also in November, OneVoice was given $350,000 in State Department grants intended for Palestinian grassroots activism and Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

Sounds so. . . humanitarian, right? Hold on — in January of this year, OneVoice announced its partnership with V15, which is committed to removing Netanyahu. At the same time V15 also gained the directorship of Jeremy Bird, who served as Obama’s deputy national campaign director in 2008, and national campaign director in 2012. Accompanying Bird to his new post in Israel with V15 were former Obama campaign operatives tasked with the goal of knocking on 1 million Israeli doors to achieve the ouster of Netanyahu.

OneVoice has declared that it is innocent of directly interfering with the Israeli elections, as doing so would threaten its tax-exempt status as a nonprofit. Spokesman Payton Knopf asserted that “OneVoice is eager to cooperate with any inquiry. And after a fair examination, we are confident no wrong doing will be found.”