Anti-Semitism at Ground Zero Mosque Counter Protest

Daniel Halper, the Weekly Standard, relays an incident that occurred at the Ground Zero mosque counter protest.

Joey "Boots" Bassolino was documenting the counter protest when he heard something that struck him as inappropriate.

"We're not going to sit there and back these Zionist Jews."

When he took issue with the remark, exercising his right to free speech, there was a problem.

Halper writes:

At Sunday's Ground Zero mosque protest, I spoke to one man who had been with the counter-protesters, Joey “Boots” Bassolino, immediately after the police pulled him out from the crowd. What happened, I asked? “There was a guy standing up, a Pakistani guy, who had identified himself as a Pakistani, and he said: ‘We’re not going to sit there and back these Zionist Jews,’” Bassolino recounted, still clearly a little shaken up.

“And I’m like, whoa, wait a minute. What’s up with the racism? And they’re like, ‘what’s racist about that?’” The guy behind Bassolino yelled “f*** you,” reached forward, grabbing his camera and hitting it. “So I kicked him in the shin,” Bassolino said. Bassolino, a disabled U.S. army veteran, claims that he’s an “objective” observer and was in the group of counter-protesters to “document what was going on.”

“These are people that are supposedly protesting racism, yet you get people standing up there on a soap box yelling about ‘Zionist Jews.’ What the hell is that? That’s racism to me, man,” Bassolino explained to me.

joeyboots writes on YouTube:

OK so I went down to cover the protests both for and against the proposed mosque at Ground Zero and when I questioned the blatant anti-semitic racism of one of the pro-mosque supporters who was on the soap box speaking to the crowd I was yelled and cussed at and told to let him speak. One of the pro-mosque supporters then cussed me and I told him about his need for a dentist and then when I went back to filming the next speaker I was hit in the head from behind and my camera grabbed by the f-bomb dropping man, so I then kicked him and the anti-semites then turned on me quickly and to the NYPD's professionalism they were in the mix within seconds to escort me away from the turning mob of hypocrites who cry racism when speaking of those against the mosque yet promote and support it themselves. How dare I question a racist anti-semite!

This is really all so ugly.

There's so much turmoil and anger.

When is TIME going to do a cover story on anti-Semitism in America?