Occupy Wall Street, Palestine solidarity movements smeared as “anti-Semitic”

Maureen Clare Murphy – The Electronic Intifada – 10/28/2011

In a news segment broadcast Wednesday night by ABC 7 News in Chicago, reporter Chuck Goudie claims that there is “a vein of anti-Semitism flowing through the movement that has Jewish leaders concerned.”

I and other activists have responded to this vile smear attack on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, and the Palestine solidarity movement more generally. 

In his report, Goudie purports to expose the “ugly underbelly of Occupy Wall Street” and cherry-picks unrepresentative, isolated cases of anti-Semitic speech to make it seem that anti-Jewish sentiment is a pervasive problem in the OWS movement.

Goudie also attempts to prove his point by saying that Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian-American community leader in Chicago, gave a speech at an Occupy Chicago rally in which Goudie claims Abudayyeh “spoke about destroying Israel.”

The short broadcast includes a seconds-long clip from a YouTube video of Abudayyeh’s speech — which was actually given at a rally held on the anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, not at an OWS rally. Abudayyeh states in the clip “they [the Palestinians] will win their freedom and independence from Israel and from the United States” — a far cry from calling for the destruction of Israel, as Goudie states in his ad hominem attack.

Palestine solidarity conflated with anti-Semitism

Goudie also dangerously conflates Palestine solidarity with anti-Semitism by reporting that demonstrators brought a large Palestinian flag to a protest outside of Chicago City Hall on Wednesday. According to Goudie’s warped logic, a Palestinian flag is somehow a symbol of anti-Semitism because Rahm Emanuel is Chicago’s first Jewish mayor.

In a text report on ABC 7’s website accompanying the video of Wednesday night’s broadcast, Goudie writes, “The I-Team asked a spokesperson for the Occupy Chicago group why they displayed a Palestinian flag outside Mayor Emanuel’s office and why a Palestinian activist would speak about Israel at one of their events. They did not provide a response.”

To Goudie, it can be inferred, any Palestinian symbol of national liberation is inherently anti-Semitic and any Palestinian speaking about Israel an automatic offense.

Goudie also neglects to mention that he only asked Occupy Chicago for a comment less than two hours before his report was broadcast. He does not mention whether he made any attempt to interview Palestine solidarity groups or community organizations in Chicago.

Goudie finds “vein of anti-Semitism” where Jewish organizations don’t

Goudie claims that anti-Semitism in the OWS movement has “Jewish leaders concerned,” but the single representative of a Jewish organization interviewed by Goudie didn’t seem as concerned by the “vein of anti-Semitism” that is keeping Goudie up at night.

“There have been some isolated incidents throughout the country that have clearly alarmed us,” the Anti-Defamation League’s Chicago director Lonnie Nasatir tells Goudie in a tone best described as less than urgent.

No other Jewish community or organizational representatives are interviewed in the story; Goudie only references a Republication National Committee internal memo and Committee for Israel video which attempt to smear the OWS movement as anti-Semitic.

Indeed, major American Jewish organizations and Israel lobby groups are so far not terribly concerned by the OWS movement.

For example, in a press release for the American Jewish Committee entitled “Is ‘Occupy Wall Street’ anti-Semitic?” the group’s “specialist on anti-Semitism and extremism” Kenneth Stern addresses concerns that some anti-Semitic slogans have been spotted on OWS protesters’ posters.

Though he treats the presence of so-called “anti-Israel groups” who talk about “the issue of US aid to Israel” and advocate for boycott, divestment and sanctions as a potential problem, Stern takes to task fear-mongering reporting such as Goudie’s:

some recent complaints from partisan quarters and in the media alleging widespread anti-Semitism are unfair. They attempt to paint the episodic incident as routine and ignore both the repudiation in instances of anti-Semitism, as well as the hospitable environment for Jews. Yom Kippur and Sukkot were both celebrated at OWS.

Stern adds:

Still, one anti-Semitic sign is too many. We live in a world where an image or moment can be captured by a cell phone camera and put on the Internet within minutes. A picture may be the equivalent of a thousand words, but it should not be taken as reflecting the ideas of thousands of participants.

It seems that the “vein of anti-Semitism spreading to Chicago” is only in Goudie’s wild imagination.

Series of attacks on Abudayyeh

This is not Chuck Goudie’s first scare-mongering report on Hatem Abudayyeh — he has produced three such segments in approximately one year focusing on the Palestinian community organizer in Chicago.

Shortly after the FBI raided Abudayyeh’s home in September 2010 as part of a coordinated raid in multiple cities targeting anti-war and Palestine and Colombia solidarity activists, Goudie attempted to make shadowy connections between the raids and city grants received by the community organization Abudayyeh directs.

And in December 2010, Goudie and ABC 7 produced a similarly shallow report, repeating the non-story that Abudayyeh’s Arab American Action Network has received city funding, and “revealing” that White House visitor records show that Abudayyeh attended an event there described as “a large Arab briefing.”

In the same report, Goudie makes several lazy errors that are indicative of the quality of his work.

Abudayyeh is repeatedly described as a “Muslim community leader,” which while certainly not offensive, is not an accurate characterization of Abudayyeh’s work, which is community- rather than faith-based. Goudie also claims that individuals subpoenaed as part of the same federal grand jury investigation targeting Abudayyeh include a pair of women who traveled to the “West Bank of Israel” over the summer and their grand jury subpoenas compel them to testify on 5 January 2011 when in fact the grand jury summons was for 25 January 2011.

(Full disclosure: I am one of the now 24 activists whose homes have been raided and/or who have been served grand jury subpoenas — for more information, see stopfbi.net. I also have organized with Abudayyeh in Chicago for several years, and yes that’s me sitting next to him at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee panel in the ABC 7 December 2010 report. I have also interviewed Abudayyeh twice for EI — after his family’s bank accounts were inexplicably closed by TCF Bank and for this special report I co-authored with my colleague Nora Barrows-Friedman on the criminalization of the Palestinian national movement in the United States.)

Avoiding talking about the real issues

As a statement put out by me and several others yesterday makes clear:

By smearing the OWS movement and Palestinian community and solidarity activists, Goudie blatantly avoids discussing the real issues that are bringing tens of thousands of Americans to the streets in cities and towns across the country.

True journalism is about holding those in power accountable, not drawing grotesque charicactures of those speaking truth to power, as Goudie did in his report.

The following call to action was released on 27 October 2011: Full call to action at source

Maureen Clare Murphy is the managing editor of The Electronic Intifada and an activist based in Chicago.