The Editor's Back Fence

Several readers have forwarded a link to a remarkable story on the Common Dreams web site:

The Double Identity of an "Anti-Semitic" Commenter: Smearing a Progressive Website to Support Israel

As the title indicates, an investigative reporter has discovered that "more than a thousand ... damaging comments over the past two years were written with a deceptive purpose by a Jewish Harvard graduate in his thirties who was irritated by the website's discussion of issues involving Israel.

"His intricate campaign, which he has admitted to Common Dreams, included posting comments by a screen name, "JewishProgressive," whose purpose was to draw attention to and denounce the anti-Semitic comments that he had written under many other screen names."

Readers with long memories may recall Richard Brenneman's 2009 story, The Campaign Against the Daily Planet, and notice some similarities to what happened to Common Dreams. One wonders.