The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen puts on his blinders and takes a look at the Occupy Wall Street movement, concluding there is nothing to the many reports of antisemitism among participants, while also suggesting any outrage should be directed at those leveling the charge.
This was my second visit to the Occupy Wall Street site and the second time my keen reporter’s eye has failed to detect even a hint of the anti-Semitism that had been trumpeted by certain right-wing Web sites and bloggers, most prominently Bill Kristol. He is a founder of the Emergency Committee for Israel, which has been running cable TV ads alleging a virtual hate rally at the Occupy Wall Street site and calling on President Obama and other important Democrats to denounce what is — as it happens — not happening there. The commercial ran on Fox News the very day I was at the site.
The imputation of anti-Semitism, however, adds gravitas to this lighthearted event. The smear is in deadly earnest, a reminder that the devious tactics of the Old Left have been adopted by the New Right. (No accident, maybe, that the practitioners are the descendants of lefties.) It produced alarm on the Internet, Jewish smoke signals alerting the ethnically twitchy to the presence of enemies and the demand that Obama, already suspected of harboring furious anti-Israel sentiments, do something. But there is nothing to be done — except to condemn anyone who uses anti-Semitism to advance a political agenda. To quote some of them: Where’s the outrage?
Contrast Cohen’s account with this, reported by the Daily Caller just yesterday. One has to wonder how Cohen’s “keen” reporter’s eye seems to have missed this completely. Google Occupy and CAIR, or Occupy and antisemiticsm and you’ll find a multitude of links Cohen can’t quite seem to find, or make for himself.
The Occupy Wall Street organizers have invited support from Muslim groups, and on Friday, their camp in New York City’s Zuccotti Park played host to an Islamist group with ties to Islamist anti-Semites, radicals and terrorists. The Islamic group held a small prayer service that featured roughly 30 men and 30 women. As required by Islamist rules, the women sat in the back and wore head coverings, as the prayer leader cried out “Allahu Akbar,” or “Allah is the Most Powerful of All.”
Given the increasing amount of documentation demonstrating how members of the media have helped shape and guide the movement all along, including a reporter working on the story for the New York Times before they scrubbed her, and some working behind the scenes from the very beginning, it should come as no surprise that one of their own would circle back in a weak attempt to shift the narrative now that, perhaps, some of the more blatant displays of antisemitism have been pushed underground.
“The one of the irate anti-Semitic dipshit with the “Nazi bankers” sign” Here I agree with Dave, that guy is a dipshit. So were all of the other anti-Semitic “dipshits” who happen to show up at these rallies. The Teacher in LA who thought Zionist Jews should be driven out of the country was a dipshit, so was that large chunk of the Occupy Chicago protesters who joined the hate Israel rally.
Perhaps Cohen would like to see this video scrubbed from the Internet, as well – much as the teacher in question was scrubbed from her job.
Yesterday, the Anti-Defamation League applauded the decision by the Los Angeles Unified School District to fire an antisemitic substitute teacher who had made her views known at #OccupyLA protests.
Below is another Big Government item Cohen apparently didn’t read and doesn’t want you to see. In his mind it’s nothing to see here, move along – a rather sad replacement for the phrase, never again.
21st Century Statecraft: Meet The Private-Public Partnership Supporting #ArabSpring & #OccupyWallSt
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