Perhaps hoping to drum up some publicity for its upcoming dinner, the ZOA has issued a press release calling for the president, Congress and other public officials to condemn incidents of anti-Semitism in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In the Press Release dated October 19, and titled "ZOA To President Obama & Congress - Condemn Anti-Semitism Of Occupy Wall Street Protestors," the organization called upon President Barack Obama Congress and other public figure "to explicitly condemn the manifestations of anti-Semitism that have figured prominently in the demonstrations of the 'Occupy Wall Street' protesters."

ZOA National Chairman of the Board Dr. Michael Goldblatt said, "We are frankly appalled and concerned that President Obama and Congressional leaders have not quickly and publicly condemned the numerous manifestations of anti-Semitism that occur regularly at the Occupy Wall street protests. This failure is all the more serious when the President and Congressional figures have spoken sympathetic words about these protests. When people start publicly blaming Jews and Israel for their problems, it is time for our political leaders to speak out.

"This contrasts sharply with the way Democratic leaders were quick to condemn alleged anti-black racist remarks and actions by Tea Party members on the basis of reports later proven to be false. They were willing to condemn the Tea Party even though two of its most repeatedly invited speakers have been African-American figures, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and Representative Allen West (R-FL)."

"The charges of racism against the Tea Party were fully documented in IREHR's report, 'Tea Party Nationalism' (http://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/tea-party-nationalism/the-report ), and have never been proven to be false," Devin Burghart, vice president of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, told me in an email. "Further, IREHR never made bigotry a partisan issue; it is a moral issue.  And the fact that Jewish Republicans in California condemned an anti-Semitic ad placed by a local Tea Party group, proves that opposition to bigotry is not partisan either."

Regarding charges of anti-Semitism in the Occupy Movement, Burghart said that his organization "has already pointed out that there are known anti-Semites trying to wheedle their way in to the Occupy movement.  [However,] the anti-Semites are having greater or less success depending on the city and the local movement."

Burghart added that "in a movement in which groups such as Jews for Racial and Economic Justice play a significant role as Jews, and a movement where Sukkahs were built in a number of cities, it would be a serious mistake to describe the movement as anti-Semitic."

Defending Beck

Last year, the ZOA planted itself firmly on the side of then Fox Television's Glenn Beck when he claimed that George Soros, who Beck has called "The Puppet Master," was a Nazi collaborator who, as a teenager, participated in the theft of property owned by Jews by the Nazis.

Instead of condemning Beck for his recklessness, in a press release (http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressrelea seID=1968), the ZOA "expressed its concern over the strong criticism that a number of American Jewish leaders and other prominent Jews in recent days have directed at ... Beck, for his criticism of Israel/U.S.-basher, financier George Soros, regarding his behavior in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944."

"In that year," the press release stated. "Soros' father obtained forged papers and bribed a government official to save his son, George, then 14 years old, by taking him in as his alleged godson under a falsified Christian identity. In this capacity, George Soros accompanied his fake godfather on his appointed rounds as a government official, confiscating property from Jews who were to be deported to their deaths in Auschwitz. George Soros later said that he felt no guilt, remorse or difficulty whatsoever for being in this situation. In fact, he wrote in a forward to his father's book, 'these ten months [of the Nazi occupation] were the happiest times of my life ... We led an adventurous life and we had fun together.'

"Regarding this circumstance, Mr. Beck said recently on his radio show that Soros 'used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening. Here's a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps. I am certainly not saying George Soros enjoyed that, even had a choice - I mean, he's 14 years old. He was surviving. So I'm not making a judgment, that's between him and G-d' ('Soros enjoys taking countries down,' November 10, 2010).

In a piece for The Daily Beast, dated November 10, 2010, Michelle Goldberg wrote that Beck's  invective  against Soros "was a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles."

The criticism of Soros, who has long been a target of the right, "went beyond demonizing him; he cast him as the protagonist in an updated Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Goldberg, the author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism and The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World, pointed out. "He described Soros as the most powerful man on earth, the creator of a 'shadow government' that manipulates regimes and currencies for its own enrichment. Obama is his 'puppet,' Beck says. Soros has even 'infiltrated the churches.' He foments social unrest and economic distress so he can bring down governments, all for his own financial gain."

Abraham Foxman, the ADL's national director and a Holocaust survivor himself, said that "Beck's description of George Soros' actions during the Holocaust is completely inappropriate, offensive and over the top. For a political commentator or entertainer to have the audacity to say-inaccurately-that there's a Jewish boy sending Jews to death camps, as part of a broader assault on Mr. Soros, that's horrific... To hold a young boy responsible for what was going on around him during the Holocaust as pawrt of a larger effort to denigrate the man is repugnant."

While IREHR's Devin Burghart wished that the Zionist Organization of America, "may live long and be well," he emphatically noted that "they did not honor themselves by honoring Glenn Beck."

(It should also be noted that more than a thousand Jews chose to observe Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement and holiest day in the Jewish year, at Liberty Park in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.)