A Christmas shopping advert has been removed from the upper west side of Manhattan after allegations that it was antisemitic.

The billboard, for a vodka company, read: "Christmas quality, Hannukah pricing".

The image showed two dogs, one wearing a Santa hat and the other with a kippah on.

The Anti-Defamation League, a US hate monitor, said the advert was "crude and offensive".

The founder of the doveish Israel advocacy group J Street and the disgraced former governor of New York are among the signatories to a statement defending Occupy Wall Street from accusations that it is antisemitic.

A Jewish florist from New York has recalled his lengthy correspondence with his "pen-pal" Colonel Gaddafi.

Octogenarian Louis Schlamowitz has spent decades writing to a host of leaders and despots, from President Harry Truman to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

The lawyer for a man accused of the shocking and brutal murder of an eight-year-old boy from a Chasidic Jewish community in New York has claimed his client was pushed into confessing to the crime.

Levi Aron, who admitted to killing Leiby Kletzky in July after the boy's dismembered body parts were found in a suitcase and at Aron's home, appeared at a court hearing in Brooklyn on Monday.

The anti-corporate Occupy Wall Street movement has been accused of harbouring antisemites. At the same time, a coalition of American Jews is expressing solidarity with the protests taking place around the world.

A conservative group has highlighted incidents of antisemitism and anti-Israel activity at the Occupy Wall Street protest.