Ad about "Killing Jews"
Is this really true? I haven't heard about it and I read the NYTimes several times a week. I'm about to go to New York City for the week-end. I can't believe this would be allowed, as in: You can't cry fire in a crowded movie theater...
6 Replies
Post ReplyThis ad was initially planned as one of a series, probably the most provocative in that series, that the American Freedom Defense Initiative was to post. Similar ads have run in other cities. The ad was initially rejected by the NY MTA, and the group sued, with the Federal judge's decision coming down on the side of free speech. The NYT has been covering their activities, and ran a piece on this decision on April 21st. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/nyregion/mta-must-run-bus-ad-from-pro…
It reads:
M.T.A. Must Run Bus Ad From Pro-Israel Group, Judge Says
By EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS APRIL 21, 2015
A federal judge in Manhattan on Tuesday ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to display an ad from a pro-Israel group on buses after the agency declined to run it last year.
The group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, sued the authority in October, saying it had infringed on the group’s First Amendment rights by rejecting the ad. The authority had argued that the ad could be seen as a call to violence against Jews.
The ad shows a man with a scarf across his face next to the words, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” attributed to “Hamas MTV.” Below that, it reads: “That’s his Jihad. What’s yours?”
The judge, John G. Koeltl, of United States District Court, ruled that the ad qualified as protected speech and granted a preliminary injunction ordering the transportation authority to run the ad. He said the order would not take effect for 30 days so the agency could consider whether it would appeal the decision.
“While the court is sensitive to the M.T.A.’s security concerns, the defendants have not presented any objective evidence that the ‘Killing Jews advertisement’ would be likely to incite imminent violence,” Judge Koeltl wrote in the order.
The judge noted that a similar ad ran in Chicago and San Francisco in 2013 without incident.
Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, called the ruling a “triumph for liberty and truth.” The group initially planned to run the ad with others as part of a campaign. Ms. Geller said she would now buy more ad space on more buses since it was running alone.
A spokesman for the authority, Adam Lisberg, said in a statement that the agency was disappointed by the ruling and would review its options.
The set of ads was intended to parody a “My Jihad” campaign by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Those “My Jihad” ads portrayed jihad as a concept of nonviolent individual and personal struggle.
Ms. Geller’s group successfully sued the authority in 2012 over another ad that the agency eventually had to run. In that case, a federal judge ruled that the authority had violated the group’s First Amendment rights.
Judge Koeltl, in his order on Tuesday, said that there was no evidence that seeing one of the ads on the back of a bus would prompt a violent reaction.
“The defendants underestimate the tolerant quality of New Yorkers,” he wrote, “and overestimate the potential impact of these fleeting advertisements.”
A version of this article appears in print on April 22, 2015, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Judge Orders M.T.A. To Run Bus Ad It Rejected.
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The MTA is pushing back with a new policy that bans all political ads, which would include this one:
http://tinyurl.com/qeg7j6m
Saga continues...
Dan Lusthaus
Whatever this group of loonies thinks they're doing this is also hate speech against Jews. It would be a good issue for NYC Jews and Moslems to rally behind. It's really hate speech toward both groups.
I find it elucidating that the New York Times chose to call the American Freedom Defense Initiative a "Pro-Israel" group rather than an "Anti-Muslim" hate group - particularly as it's the American branch of the Stop Islamisation of Europe which, to my mind, has never expressed a pro-Israel stance. Further, other than one or two of its ads expressing pro-Israel sentiments, the vast majority of AFDI campaigns have been focused on 9/11 or terrorism more broadly - indicating that any pro-Israel platform is a minor part of its campaign (if not just a political afterthought).
I think Mariah Adin makes an important point. Like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ADL has also described the AFDI as a hate group. That said, in the "blogosphere" and among a range of groups that have allied with the AFDI--especially those that call themselves "Christian Zionists"--the focus is, indeed, on their version of "protecting Israel."
I find it fascinating that nearly all the online debate focuses not on the quote, but on those who blew the whistle and exposed the quote.
This response is typical, and it's encouraged by global media and academia in incidents that involve Muslims attacking Jews. I have lately been studying the abundant examples that came out during the Israel-Hamas War last summer. It's expressed either as a one-sided critique of the Jewish response which ignores the Muslim initiative, or as an 'even-handed' critique that pronounces the Jews and the Muslims both guilty of racist hatred.
When the latter critics are pressed for supporting evidence, the usual response is to attack the questioner as racist or stupid for challenging a "self-evident" statement... which has the twin benefit of evading the challenge to prove this theory of equal guilt, while discouraging further challenges.
That said, I hope for Michele's explanation of how the Hamas statement in the ad expresses hatred against Muslims. Maybe I missed something there.
My take on Pamela Geller's efforts is that she is playing it smart. She has rightly perceived that (a) Western societies do not take anti-Israel groups seriously unless they see these groups as also threatening their own values; and (b) modernized societies don't remember anything for longer than an hour, unless it's shocking and controversial. So the pro-Israel platform takes a back seat, AFDI highlights the shared "terrorist threat" (the jihadist wet-dream of brutalizing all dhimmi populations until they submit to shariya law), and they raise awareness in sensational ways so as to leave a lasting impression.
In this ad campaign, their target audience appears to be what I call the "islamo-pacifists", who embrace the illusion that violent jihad is a fiction concocted by the islamophobes. A secondary audience might be the Jews of America, many of whom reside in the cities where the ads are appearing -- and many of whom are living in the illusion that even violent jihadists differentiate between "Israelis", "Zionists" and "Jews". To say, as the MTA tried to say, that to expose this Jew-hatred would be bad for the Jews, is not only Orwellian double-speak, it's advocacy for continuing the illusions.
But with all due respect... I would have expected this distinguished group to zero in on the antisemitism of the Hamas message and its reception by the media, rather than debate the moral standards, wisdom and mental stability of the whistleblowers.
Why are the Hamas-TV producers, and their Western media colleagues who look the other way, getting a free pass here? Let's upgrade this discussion to the standards H-Anti was famous for in past years.
I for one would like to see more comment on the implied antisemitism in a media bias which distracts attention from the source of Jew-hatred by provoking controversy over those who exposed it.
A bit more challenging is the court decision, which ruled in favor of AFDI only because so far no one had acted on the "hate speech" featured so prominently in the ad.
Okay, so we know the judge had to respond to the MTA's ridiculous claim that AFDI would be unintentionally inflaming the clueless New Yorkers to go on a Jew-killing rampage. What I have in mind is what appears to be deliberate misdirection of public awareness on the part of the court, away from the only audience likely to be influenced in the way MTA described -- and hiding them behind the broad backs of the entire NYC population. The MTA presented this straw-man, and the judge was complicit in propping it up.
The rationale behind that complicity is another version of the 'even-handed' approach: if everyone is equally vulnerable to jihadist hate speech, then there's no need to address any specific religious motivator. What's harder to answer: Is this an antisemitic evasion that is applied only to Muslim-on-Jewish violence, or is it an islamo-pacifist response to all religious Muslim violence?
Very interesting, Mariah.