They are at it again. But so are we.
A new and viciously anti-Israel ad is running on Washington, DC buses, reading “We’re Sweating April 15 So Israelis Don’t Have To! Stop US Aid to Israel’s Occupation” and featuring a grim-looking Uncle Sam waving an Israeli flag. American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) is the sponsor of this Jew-hating ad, which evokes the ugly anti-Semitic stereotypes in which Jew-haters have long trafficked.
This is part of a systematic campaign by many different Islamic and leftist groups to dehumanize and demonize the Jewish state. This vicious propaganda is running in various forms across the country, unchallenged even by pro-Israel groups that ought to be at the forefront of this battle.
The AMP is run by Dr. Hatem Bazian, a University of California-Berkeley professor who equated the Boston jihad bombings with “Islamophobia.”
How bad has leftist academia become? Bazian teaches a course entitled “De-Constructing Islamophobia and History of Otherness.” One requirement of this class is for students to collect reactions from “people of color” to my ads criticizing jihad terrorism and Islamic supremacism.
Bazian also required his students to tweet weekly on Islamophobia. And he is not the only Islamic supremacist associated with the AMP. Others include Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, who has called Israel a “racist” state that is “basically an apartheid system in creation”; Imam Ziad Shakir, who has praised the jihad terror group Hamas; Rafeeq Jaber, a strong supporter of the jihad terror group Hizballah; Norman Finkelstein, who has called Zionists “basically Nazis with beards and black hats“; and Max Blumenthal, who has recently published a book-length screed defaming Israel and retailing Palestinian jihad propaganda.
For years, AMP’s ads have run unchallenged. But this time, we were there. Their lies did not stand as the only word. We are fighting back. My organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has submitted a truth-telling ad to run on the same bus line, on the same city streets, and in the same venues as the Islamic Jew-hatred ad.
Our ad features of photo of Adolf Hitler and his staunch ally, the leader of the Muslim world, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who lived in Berlin during World War II and raised up a division of Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen SS. The ad reads: “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s In the Quran. Two-Thirds of All US Aid Goes to Islamic Countries. Stop Racism. End All Aid to Islamic Countries.”
Our organization receives enormous abuse and defamation for responding to these disgusting lies. Who can forget the media sympathizing with CNN “journalist” Mona Eltahawy when she physically destroyed one of our ads and attacked an innocent bystander for trying to protect it?
Increasingly, we see that the more you speak the truth, the uglier the enemy’s response becomes–which of course makes us smile. And Washington Metro demanded that I provide substantiation for every claim in this ad. And this is nothing new. Every time I submit an ad, I have to provide evidence of everything I am asserting. I’d like to know if the AMP is held to the same standard. How would they possibly provide evidence for their ad–show photos of Americans sweating while Israelis luxuriated in ease? Their ad is an outrageous libel–well-distributed and well-worn.
Now more than ever, we have to educate the American people. And we are getting it done. AFDI fights the propaganda putsch of the AMP and other leftist and Islamic supremacist groups by going on the offense and taking the message to the people. We’re bringing the truth about Israel, the global jihad against free people, and Islamic supremacism directly to the people. We force a media discussion of the grim realities of jihad and Sharia that they usually sweep under the rug.
Now more than ever, when voices and work like ours are increasingly silenced, we have to be bolder and go on the offense.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here.