A conservative group called The Emergency Committee for Israel is rallying against the Occupy Wall Street Protests, a movement they are attempting to make out as anti-Semitic.
An advertisement that will soon hit television stations in New York City and Washington DC asks viewers, “Why are our leaders turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic, anti-Israel attacks?” The promo poses the question as images of US President Barack Obama, Senate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other leading democrats are put on screen. To back up the allegations, the Committee also includes a small sampling of sound bites from the Lower Manhattan protests in which some videotaped outliers appear to oust members of the Jewish community.
Among one of the protesters included in the clip is Danny “Lotion Man” Cline, a Jewish resident of New York. While the ad includes a clip of him berating a fellow Jew, he has also been videotaped picking fights with other protesters partaking in Occupy Wall Street and also harming the homeless.
“It is surprising that respectable liberals have praised the protesters while ignoring the anti-Semitism. Liberals have pretended to see nothing hateful and hear nothing hateful, and therefore have said nothing to rebuke their allies,” asks ECI chairman William Kristolin a statement. “Will they now speak up?”
“I’ve been down at the Occupy Wall Street park for over three weeks straight, and I have seen people I think who have tread the line but they do pretty much come from the right wing,” Arun Gupta tells RT. Gupta of the newspaper The Indypendent has offered up his printing press to held publish The Occupied Wall Street Journal, the paper that has become the voice of the movement.
Gupta adds that he thinks any attempts from conservatives to peg the movement as anti-Semitic will fail, noting that “I think it will fall flat on its face cause it’s simply not true.”
Louis Cholden-Brown, an active participant in Occupy Wall Street agrees with Gupta that the advertisement attempts to capitalize on isolated incidents. “This not an anti-Jewish moment. This is not an anti-Zionist movement,” says Cholden-Brown, who himself is Jewish.
So why does The Emergency Committee for Israel want to warn Americans that they should “Tell President Obama and Leader Pelosi to stand up to the mob”?
Gupta says it is just more right-wing fear mongering.