RUTHFULLY YOURS

Jewish Exponent Watch (Report #3), by Moshe Phillips

http://www.examiner.com/jewish-culture-in-philadelphia/jewish-exponent-fetes-loserpalooza-aka-occupy-philly-ignores-anti-semitismMordechai Shinefield’s gushing, almost-1,000-word article about leftist Jewish outreach at the Occupy Philly (aka Loserpalooza) encampment, “A Touch of Tradition Amid ‘Occupy’ Protests,” was the longest local hard news story in a month in the (Philadelphia) Jewish Exponent. The October 13 article did more to blur the lines between news coverage and propaganda than anything to appear in he Exponent in recent memory.

Anti-Semitism has from the start been part of the Occupy Wall Street campaign and its spawn, even if many of the campaign’s participants are unwitting. The Exponent has completely ignored this. So has Abraham Foxman’s so-called “Anti-Defamation League” (ADL). It is worth remembering that, when the Occupy crowd says “bankers” and “Wall Street,” for radicals from neo-Nazis to the Nation of Islam to Lyndon LaRouche to the hard left, those terms are code words for “Jews”

(In terms of background, this video offers clear examples of Jew-baiting at Occupy Wall Street. As for the ADL’s not-stunning-to-those-who-know-the-way-the-ADL-operates silence, there is a worthwhile article on Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com. Additionally, the Human Events website shows how the Nazis and the communists both see the Occupy radicals as potentials allies.)

As for Shinefield, his previous offerings on his blog for the New York-based leftist Jewish newspaper The Forward demonstrate his allegiance to the radical-left crowd. In the Exponent, however, Shinefield’s misdirected cheerleading reaches new lows.

He identifies “Rabbi” Mordechai Liebling as “the director of the Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote.” He fails to identify Liebling’s longtime leadership roles in the organizations that have been the most extreme Jewish critics of Israel in American Jewish communal life. (Liebling’s photo appeared with the article as well.)

One thing is clear about Liebling: He has never found a group that criticized Israel too harshly for him to still lend his name to.

Liebling, a former director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, was on Brit Tzedek v’Shalom’s Rabbinic Cabinet and is a “Rabbinical Supporter of the Fast for Gaza.” He is has a history of signing the most vicious advertisements to appear in the U.S. press criticizing Israeli government policy and Jewish settlers. To see just how outrageous the Fast for Gaza is see http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/09/the-true-face-of-j-street-2/ .

Shinefield writes that Liebling “penned a variant of the traditional al chet prayer of repentance that added sins of waste, overconsumption, inequality, war and conflict to the traditionally listed sins.”

This is an old stunt originally developed by Liebling allies Arthur Waskow and Michael Lerner. This co-opting of Jewish liturgy and symbolism in an attempt to provide cover and legitimacy to the far-left agenda being peddled is a key tactic used by Reconstructionists and their ilk. It is straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.

What’s more alarming is the penchant among Liebling and his allies for using Holocaust imagery. Liebling was one of the founding participants on the “Break the Silence Campaign” in 2000. Break the Silence co-sponsored an American speaking tour in 2000 for an Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions leader named Jeff Halper. While on the tour Halper gave an interview on Boston radio station WBUR’s “Connection” program, on January 18, 2000, in which he compared Israel’s legal system to Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws.

NOTE: Thank you to readers of the first two Jewish Exponent Watch reports who sent their comments to us by email at exponentwatch@gmail.com. We’d like to hear from you too.

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Moshe Phillips is the president of the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans For a Safe Israel / AFSI. The chapter’s website is at: www.phillyafsi.com. His blog can be found at http://phillyafsi.blogtownhall.com and he tweets at http://twitter.com/MoshePhillips.