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Just as some liberal critics of the Tea Party labeled it a broadly racist movement, right-wing critics of Occupy Wall Street are tarring it with charges of anti-Semitism. It's how politics works apparently. Unfortunately, some of the main personalities trying to tar OWS with anti-Semtism have a history of abusing the anti-Semitism charge and have been looking for excuses to attack the group from day one.
On Wednesday, the Republican National Committee issued a statement assailing Democratic leaders for expressing support for the movement. "Democratic leaders have spent the last week championing the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement," wrote RNC communications director Sean Spicer, "yet in the midst of protestors’ extreme anti-Semitic, anti-Israel comments, they’ve been silent." The memo follows a slow drumbeat by right-wing pundits such as Rush Limbaugh, Commentary's Abe Greenwald, Powerline's John Hinderaker and Glenn Beck's website The Blaze to smear the movement as hateful and intolerant to Jewish people. The ammunition bolstering these claims largely comes from a group called the Emergency Committee for Israel, which is led by neocon Bill Kristol and evangelical politician Gary Bauer, as Jillian Rayfield at Talking Points Memo reported. The group's most successful piece of publicity stems from this web video it uploaded to YouTube on Oct. 13: