The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), a far-right Republican pressure group, knows that it is still too early to roll out its full "Obama hates Israel" campaign.

However, considering all the money in its coffers, it has found a cause that serves its purpose just as well: assailing the Occupy Wall Street movement as anti-Semitic.

No matter that its evidence is the presence of a total of three lunatics in the Wall Street crowds in contrast to thousands of Jews (see this video). It makes sense for ECI to libel a movement that threatens its wealthy donors' interests far more than Obama threatens Netanyahu's.

That is because ECI is not really about Israel. It is all about defending the political and economic interests of its millionaire donors by electing Republicans. That means smearing Democrats who might raise its sponsors' taxes. And it means lying about the Occupy Wall Street movement which defends working people and excoriates the one per cent Theodore Roosevelt called "malefactors of great wealth".

How do we know that ECI's supposed devotion to Israel is nothing but a pretext for its defence of the GOP? (See this J Street paper on ECI, for example.)

Because the Emergency Committee for Israel consistently attacks Democrats as anti-Israel while praising Republicans as if they were virtual members of the Israeli military.

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