Antisemitism is coming into fashion again, and anti-Israel bus ads had been set to start running on twelve buses in Seattle this Monday. The ads featured the hateful slogan, “Israeli War Crimes: Your Tax Dollars at Work.” But two days after my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, announced that we would be running king-sized pro-Israel ads on Seattle buses to counter their hate ads, King County Metro Transit folded: Transit officials issued a statement Thursday saying that they would be refusing the anti-Israel, antisemitic ads. They were “changing their policy.”
The annihilationist bus ads were rejected!
It was a bad day for Nazis and Jew-haters, and a huge victory for all lovers of freedom.
The AFDI ads were singular and hard-hitting: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Islamic jihad,” and “One Billion Dollars to Hamas. Your Tax Dollars at Work.”
And this one:
As for the Jewish blood libel being sponsored by the notorious antisemite Ed Mast, Seattle Mass Transit is having second thoughts.
Our objective was achieved: the Jew-hate ads were dropped after we exposed the hypocrisy of the Seattle Transit authorities. But wait. It gets better. King County Metro Transit has also now changed its ad policy. Isn’t that special? This policy change enabled them to refuse AFDI’s pro-Israel ad as well. King County Executive Dow Constantine explained that the policy change was made because “the escalation of this issue from one of 12 local bus placards to a widespread and often vitriolic international debate introduces new and significant security concerns that compel reassessment.”
And who was introducing the vitriol and the significant security concerns, as far as King County Metro Transit was concerned? Me, of course. Who else? They were OK with a Jewish blood libel but hid under their desks when truth demanded equal time.
Sharron Shinbo of King County Metro Transit stated that my AFDI ads would “pose an unacceptable risk of harm, disruption and interference with the transportation system and other breaches of the public safety, peace and order.”
So now anti-jihad ads denouncing a terrorist group that all decent people should revile “pose an unacceptable risk of harm, disruption and interference with the transportation system.”
Truth is the new hate speech.
This is the heckler’s veto. Remember, King County Metro Transit was down with the Jew-haters and their vile advertisement. They were even going to charge me more than they were charging the antisemites. According to Seattle’s KING 5 News, Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign paid $1,794 to run the ads. However, King County Metro Transit would not offer me that price. I asked for the same deal as the Jew-haters received, but was told that the price in the article was “misquoted.” They quoted me a price of $2,760 per ad.
Seattle Transit officials also dragged their feet in approving my ad from the beginning. At one point they demanded that I put my phone number and address on the bus ads. I get my fair share of hate mail and threats, as you might imagine, but in the past the brazen hate and annihilationist dreams were kept in check by good men who stood for good over evil. The ascent of Islam and the voluntary abdication of the West as a force for good has unleashed the forces of evil from their hiding places of hell. How about putting a big giant target on my back, clowns?
And remember: now they’re saying that both the Jew-hate ad and my ads violate their guidelines, but they had already accepted the antisemitic ad. Seattle had no hesitation depicting Jews defending themselves as a war crime until we placed our counter-ad. “Palestinian” Muslims have fired over ten thousand rockets into southern Israel, but now Seattle won’t allow ads condemning the actual war crimes.
The Jew-hating, anti-Israel ad didn’t “pose an unacceptable risk of harm, disruption and interference with the transportation system and other breaches of the public safety, peace and order” until we responded with fierce truth. And then they said, never mind. But they won’t get off so easy. This is actionable. Legally actionable.
We will pursue this battle legally and roll out the pro-Israel bus ads elsewhere. My life-saving bus ads for Muslim apostates were banned in Detroit. We had to sue to get them up in Miami. We had to sue New York transit to get Ground Zero bus ads up.
Speech is free as long as you demonize Jews or Christians.
But we will not stand for it. And you shouldn’t, either. Ayn Rand said it:
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.