V15 campaign poster in Tel Aviv
V15 campaign poster in Tel AvivAmir Levy/Flash 90

Among the most disappointed with the results of Tuesday's elections are the activists of the V15 group – the organization that may or may not have been funded by American and European interests, but whose aim was to remove Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from office. “A confusing night turned into a painful morning,” the group said in a statement. “It was painful not because we lost, but because we have no faith in the winners.”

V15 – Victory in 2015, a project of the One Voice group – was accused of being operated and funded by anti-right groups abroad, which gave the group money to set up an organization that would cause Netanyahu to lose. The group denied that it was representing foreign agents, and the Likud sought to have the group shut down, unsuccessfully.

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 the leftist One Voice organization, which receives money from the New Israel Fund, which raises most of its money in the US and Europe.

Reportedly, 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.

The group continued to operate, hiring hundreds of workers to knock on doors and drive voters to the polls on Election Day, among other activities. But it was to no avail, as Netanyahu went on to decimate Zionist Union/Labor at the polls. As a result, the group said, Netanyahu, who “does not care” about Israelis but is only worried about “his own seat in the government,” would be able to “continue his caesar-like rule.”

“Unfortunately,” the group said, Netanyahu's “scare tactics worked on too many people, who are afraid of something new. But we are not angry, nor do we need to be. Despite the tears in our eyes, our hearts are filed with hope” for a victory in the future.