Anti Jihad subway ads defaced

The next stop in the political rumblings of posters between Israel supporters and Israel detractors in the transit system was two pronged: the MTA came out with new guidelines for advertisements and a CNN/MSNBC columnist was arrested for defacing one of the pro-Israel ads.

An ad campaign, initiated by Pamela Geller, founder and executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), was planned in 2010 “to counter the anti-Israel ads that ran in New York subways and all over the country,” wrote Geller in an email. “We had to sue the MTA and win the suit for our free speech rights.” The ads read: “In Any War Between the Civilized Man and the Savage, Support the Civilized Man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

Ten ads are posted throughout the subway system. “The ads are intended to raise awareness of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat,” explained Geller. Noting that she accomplished what she set out to do with the ads, she said that, “ a national discussion has begun and that is all to the good, as truths are being discussed that the mainstream media is afraid to touch.” She said that she has been “inundated with emails praising the ads…from all over the world.”

Three negative views cited by Geller were an Egyptian-American pundit, Mona Eltahawy, who was arrested for spray painting an ad (others defaced ads in different locations), and negative comments from the ADL, Russell Simmons, and Rabbi Marc Schneier. “They oppose the campaign because they falsely assume that I was referring to all Muslims as ‘savages’ and they claim the campaign is somehow ‘racist,’” she said. “Jihad terror against innocent civilians is not a race.”

AFDI was founded in 2010 to “defend the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience and the equality of rights of all people,” said Geller. She is also publisher of AtlasShrugs.com, a regular weekly columnist for World Net Daily, and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America and Stop Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.

American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) Co-Founder and Senior Counsel Robert Muise, commenting on a law suit on the posting of the same ads in Washington, D.C., noted on Geller’s website, Atlas Shrugged: “This lawsuit represents a clash between our American values and the fundamental right to freedom of speech on the one hand and those values espoused by sharia-adherent Muslims who want to suppress speech through violence on the other. In direct contravention of our Constitution, the WMATA is siding with the jihadists and silencing our clients’ political speech. This is known as a ‘heckler’s veto,’ which is impermissible under the First Amendment.”

AFLC sued the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), when it refused to put up the ads in September 2011, stating that it violated the MTA’s policy to not post “images or information that demean an individual or group of individuals on account of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation.” A New York federal judge struck down the MTA’s restriction on August 29, 2012.

Previous ads portrayed Israel in a negative light and exhorted the public to protest American aid to Israel.

“We’re not ‘against’ running the ads,” responded Aaron Donovan, Media Liaison for the MTA, via email. “We do not take a position for or against any of the advertisements that are proposed for our system. When an ad is proposed, we evaluate it to ensure it conforms to a set of uniform, value-neutral advertising standards. In accordance with the First Amendment, we post any ad that is proposed unless it violates one of our guidelines. The MTA determined that labeling a group of people savage was demeaning. We rejected the ad but offered to accept the ad if it was re-worded. Today the MTA Board voted to modify the MTA’s Advertising Standards for the first time since 1997. Our revised advertising policy will require sponsors who submit viewpoint ads on political, religious or moral topics to include a disclaimer that makes it perfectly clear that their ad expresses their views, not MTA’s.”

When asked who decides what is considered offensive, Donovan wrote: “As part of the routine work-flow of advertising sales, advertising artwork is sent to our advertising contactor, CBS Outdoor, which manages all of the individual advertising transactions and contracts. The MTA reviews ad artwork as well, and the MTA has the final say in cases that prove controversial.”