This was my second visit to the Occupy Wall Street site and the second time my keen reporter’s eye has failed to detect even a hint of the anti-Semitism that had been trumpeted by certain right-wing Web sites and bloggers, most prominently Bill Kristol. He is a founder of the Emergency Committee for Israel, which has been running cable TV ads alleging a virtual hate rally at the Occupy Wall Street site and calling on President Obama and other important Democrats to denounce what is — as it happens — not happening there. The commercial ran on Fox News the very day I was at the site. …

The Anti-Defamation League has managed to find a paltry few. But even this watchdog Jewish organization, while noting the odd Jew-hater on the periphery of the anti-Wall Street group, found that “anti-Semitism has not gained traction . . . nor is it representative of the larger movement at this time.” Possibly more representative is the fact that Jewish religious services were held at the protest site for the holidays of Yom Kippur and Simchat Torah. If these were disrupted by roving bands of contemporary Cossacks, the local media have failed to mention it — yet another cause for outrage, no doubt. …

The imputation of anti-Semitism, however, adds gravitas to this lighthearted event. The smear is in deadly earnest, a reminder that the devious tactics of the Old Left have been adopted by the New Right. (No accident, maybe, that the practitioners are the descendants of lefties.) It produced alarm on the Internet, Jewish smoke signals alerting the ethnically twitchy to the presence of enemies and the demand that Obama, already suspected of harboring furious anti-Israel sentiments, do something. But there is nothing to be done — except to condemn anyone who uses anti-Semitism to advance a political agenda. To quote some of them: Where’s the outrage?