Right-Wing Website: 99 Percenters’ Twitter Hashtag Symbol Is ‘Bizarre Neo-Swastika’

The attack unleashed mostly by the neoconservative right on the 99 Percent Movement for alleged pervasive anti-Semitism reached absurd new heights over the weekend and early this week. An ad launched last week by the Bill Kristol-led Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) — whose hedge fund bankroller happens to really hate financial regulation reform — made the rounds of the mainstream media, getting picked up by Politico‘s Ben Smith and the Washington Post‘s neoconservative blogger Jennifer Rubin.

The ad, which was largely ripped off from a pseudonymous Israeli neocon blog (whose author proclaims to be a “friend” of ECI’s executive-director-in-title-only Noah Pollak), portrayed anti-Semitic sentiments in videos of two people — one of them an admitted petty thief and apparent camera-hungry provocateur — and a photograph of a sign-holder. And other websites posted a woman expressing anti-Semitic sentiments on a Reason video apparently at L.A.’s protest. That’s four people out of hundreds of thousands worldwide that have participated in 99 Percent protests. The “few Jew-baiters,” wrote Michelle Goldberg, “are marginal, particularly compared to the large numbers of Jewish activists taking part.” She wrote that ECI’s accusation was “dishonest and deceptive.” It’s worse: If it weren’t such a serious subject — Marc Tracy calls the accusation “highly irresponsible” — labeling the whole movement as “anti-Semitic” would be laughable. Dan Sieradski of Occupy Judaism, which is seeking to rally Jewish supporters to the 99 Percent movement, dismissed the “couple of jerks and idiots” and noted that a thousand people turned out for high holiday services organized for the Occupy Wall Street protesters.