Occupy Wall Street and the Jews

The key thing about the rash of anti-Semitism we've seen out of Occupy Wall Street is not that it's shocking, but so mainstream. I'm not shocked at all by it. I write about this stuff all the time. One reason progressives work so hard to shut me down and shut down this blog is because I continually and relentless shine a light of moral approbation on their Jew-hatred. Not enough people do this, in my opinion. People must think that anti-Semitism lingers only in the extreme fringes of the aging millenarian right-wing, the last gasp of a few Nazis. But it's not that. As I've noted numerous times, Jew-hatred is the premiere organizing position of today's progressive-left movement. And while some remind us not to worry too much about Israel, say, since it's more vibrant and economically stronger than its regional enemies, I think there's never a good time be complacent about these things, especially since Jew-hatred seems to gain more mainstream acceptance by the day. The events of the last two months in New York and around the country have shown what it's like when the big media outlets and top political officials pooh-pooh the hate. "First they came…"

A particularly perverse version of such enabling can be seen in Michelle Goldberg's, "One Percent," at the Jewish magazine Tablet. Goldberg keeps stressing how Occupy Wall Street is "anarchist," and hence, there's no way to control or ostracize the "minimal" numbers of anti-Semitic members:

Occupy Wall Street lacks tools for enforcing any sort of discipline, or ostracizing troublemakers. When someone at a Tea Party rally holds a particularly offensive sign, as many have, the movement can denounce them. But there is no one at Occupy Wall Street to do the denouncing.

Somehow Goldberg can write this with a straight face, after she writes earlier in the essay that the organizing model at Zuccotti Park has "has fostered, for the most part, a spirit of volunteerism and cooperation." So which is it? Anarchy or cooperation? If there's cooperation among activists, there's not an "inability to enforce some kind of order." All these idiots have to do is get in the face of the Jew-hating freaks and have them GTFO. What's the problem?

Well, the problem is that Goldberg is a typical progressive Jew who sees the main danger to Jewish life emerging on the right. Sure, Goldberg probably really does cringe at the blatant anti-Semitism. I just think she's too stupid to realize she's attached to the wrong side. Not so for MJ Rosenberg, a Media Matters "fellow" and epitome of Jewish neo-communist extremism. See Rosenberg's piece, "Exploiting anti-Semitism to destroy Occupy Wall Street," at the Jewish Journal:

An ugly old tradition is back: exploiting anti-Semitism to break the backs of popular movements that threaten the power of the wealthiest 1 percent of our population. It is being used to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has conservatives in a state of near panic....

Because utilizing anti-Semitism directly would not succeed in this country today, the reactionary defenders of the economic status quo are using the flip side of the coin: the fear of being labeled anti-Semitic. They are accusing Occupy Wall Street of anti-Semitism, relying on the old myth that Wall Street is Jewish and hence that opposition to Wall Street’s agenda is just opposition to Jews.

There's more at the link, and Rosenberg gets hammered at the comments. He's a really bad act, and his ravings are truly the product of the most perverse neo-communist class-warfare tropes. He turns my stomach.

In any case, the video above is the trailer for "Unmasked: Judeophobia and the Threat to Civilization." Phyllis Chesler references it at her entry, "An Open Letter to the ‘Good Liberal’ Who Ignores Occupy Wall Street’s Jew Hatred." And she notes there:

Unmasked ... shows us the Parisian mobs (leftists and Islamists) crying “Death to the Jews” in 2001. We see and hear angry, hate-choked speeches delivered on American campuses which characterize Israel as a “Nazi, Apartheid” state. We see Israeli soldiers confiscating 50 tons of ship-borne weapons in 2010 — weapons which included rockets with the capacity to attack the Israeli Navy and even more sites in civilian Israel. We see what really happened when armed Turkish mercenaries violated international law and attacked Israeli soldiers on the Mavi Marmara. We are reminded that Israel was condemned for exercising its legal right to self-defense, and that Israel brings all goods and supplies into Gaza after first checking for weapons. The “blockade” of Gaza exists to keep weapons out that are being expressly brought in to exterminate Israelis.

When I ran into anti-Semitism in the early 1970s, I at first believed it could be contained, even resolved, if Israel only Did Something Else.

I was wrong. No matter what else or what more Israel did or could do, it would ever have been enough. Israel’s crime is an essential and existential one. It exists. This is unforgivable. It remains a permanent offense to Arabs and Muslims. In 2000, when Arafat launched his Second Intifada, I knew that Wiesel’s bloody beast was back. In 2003, I published a book about it: The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It.

What I first began writing and talking about nearly a decade ago has here been brought to life, expanded, and dramatically enacted in this film.

Read the whole thing.

Chesler indicates that the war against the Jews is a war of the information battlespace. It's a battle of the minds over the social construction of right and wrong in the contemporary age. If big media silence on the #OWS Jew-hatred is any sign, we've got a lot of work to do.

UPDATE: Linked at PACNW Righty, "Occupy Wall Street and the Jews."