RochesterConservative.com

By rochester_veteran

Anti-Semitism reared its ugly head at the Ground Zero Mosque (GZM) counter protest. Daniel Halper from the Weekly Standard reports:

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.

Here’s the video that Joey Bassolino took and the incident took place 3:55 minutes into the video:

So much for religious tolerance and bridge building that the GZM supporters are touting.

In the meantime, Gov. Paterson is meeting with NY Archbishop Timothy Dolan today (8/24/2010) to discuss the GZM. From WENY-TV News:

NEW YORK (AP) — Gov. David Paterson says he’ll meet the Archbishop of New York City to discuss the mosque planned for two blocks from Ground Zero.

The private meeting is scheduled for Tuesday at the governor’s Manhattan office.

Opponents and protesters say the mosque should be moved farther away from where Islamic extremists destroyed the World Trade Center in 2001. Supporters say religious freedom should be protected.

Paterson has renewed his offer of state assistance to the project’s developers if they want to move.

I wonder if Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will make an effort to even listen to Paterson’s offer? We’ll soon see…

Hat tip to Harry Riley for the heads-up on this!