Eli Clifton reports: The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), has joined the pack of conservative groups working to discredit the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The ECI — a Bill Kristol–Gary Bauer–Rachel Abrams-conceived organization — launched a YouTube ad this morning, seeking to paint the Wall Street protests as anti-Semitic.
The ad, which was faithfully promoted by ECI’s go-to media outlets — Politico’s Ben Smith, the Weekly Standard, and Commentary — alleges that Democratic party leaders are “turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic, anti-Israel attacks,” and urges President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to “stand up to the mob.” Watch it:
While the anti-Semitic signs and clips shown in the commercial are deeply offensive, the Occupy Wall Street protesters have consistently rejected the attempts of a small number of extremists to hijack the movement. In fact, on Friday, “new media activist” Daniel Sieradski organized over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters to participate in Kol Nidre, the prayers that begin Yom Kippur.
It turns out that one of the characters being highlighted in the ECI video was honing his act as a loud mouth on the streets of New York well before Occupy Wall Street began. The man in question is Danny Cline aka “Lotion Man” and his desire to capture the interest of anyone holding a camera seems stronger than anything else. Offending people seems to be Cline’s preferred way of gaining attention. As a self-confessed petty thief, he isn’t representative of the movement he’s attempted to insert himself inside. But he turned out to be a useful performer for ECI’s purposes.
The last thing the Israel lobby would want to highlight would be scenes such as this: Jewish demonstrators celebrating Yom Kippur.
As for what an accurate representation of the incredibly diverse face of Occupy Wall Street actually looks like, here’s just one example:
This is a display of hatred agianst Jews and the Jewish state by any definition. Your site singles out Israel out of the worlds nations. It is a free and democratic country in a world filled with oppressive governments.
What a preposterous lie—“hate is not an American Value”. Hate is a human value, it is engendered by being weaker than ones enemies. Hate is active and thriving in all three of the Abrahamic religions, threatening to dwarf the love and compassion they claim. Always has and always will. All people who wish to rise above it must continually work in themselves and in their societies to lessen the factors that create it.
This may not be a popular truth, but creating well financed and placed commercials that are edited to show only the message they are paid to get and deliberately diminishing the people’s whole message is not the way to end hatred. It magnifies it.
Hate has nothing to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement. However, it DOES apply in the reactions to the people who want to stifle the people´s right to raise awareness of unfair the unfair distribution of wealth in the world. Hopefully, the public outcry will result in positive changes in society, not only in the US, but worldwide. Long live this peaceful movement!