Ads highlighting anti-semitism are dividing the Jewish community

Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for New York City buses to carry ads that say, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah.” The shocking quote—next to a photo of a young man wrapped in a Palestinian headscarf—is attributed to “Hamas MTV.” At the bottom of the ad is a tag line: “That’s His Jihad…What’s Yours?”

The ad is sponsored by the pro-Israel group American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), part of a series of advertisements the group sponsored with the goal of linking Islam to violence and anti-semitism. The ad campaign has divided the U.S. Jewish community and sparked vociferous denunciations of AFDI’s leader. Undeterred, AFDI President and Jewish blogger Pamela Geller isn’t backing down.

One of the other ads in the campaign shows a photo of Osama Bin Laden alongside his quote: “The first thing I’m calling you to is Islam.” Another ad shows a photo of Adolf Hitler meeting with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and accompanying text that says, “Islamic Jew Hatred: it’s in the Quran.”

“These ads are a response to vicious anti-Israel ads running across major cities in America,” Geller told NBC. “We are countering a false narrative with the truth.”

The ad’s tag line “That’s His Jihad…What’s Yours?” parodies a recent ad campaign by The Council On American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The group ran ads across the United States with the goal of casting a more moderate version of Islam and redefining the term “jihad.” According to The Washington Post, one such ad said, “#MyJihad is to build friendships across the aisle. What’s yours?”

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) declined to run the “Killing Jews” ad last summer, based on concerns it could be misinterpreted and actually incite violence against Jews. U.S. District Court Judge John Koeltl rejected that argument and ordered the MTA to display the ads.

Mayor Bill De Blasio called the posters “anti-Islamic … inflammatory and wrong,” according to Fox News. The Huffington Post and The Washington Post both noted AFDI is classified as an “Anti-Muslim Hate Group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Controversy is nothing new for Geller. The New York Times profiled her ascent to prominence when—through her blog Atlas Shrugs—she spear-headed efforts to block a Muslim community center from being built two blocks from New York’s hallowed Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center towers once stood. Geller raised hackles with statements like the one made to CNN about 9/11: “I will say that the Muslim terrorists were practicing pure Islam, original Islam.” Such statements led CAIR to label Geller “the queen of the Muslim bashers.”

Geller also has elicited criticism (and some support) from within the Jewish community. Although she frequently is invited to speak at Jewish events, some high profile Jewish agencies have distanced themselves from her. In a Sunday article in the New York Daily News, Rabbi Rick Jacobs—president of the Union of Reformed Congregations, the country’s largest Jewish denomination—called Geller an “infamous fear monger.” Jacobs complained Geller smears Islam with a broad brush and “what she does … has no place in a Jewish community built on tolerance and understanding.”

In a typically aggressive and bombastic style, Geller often describes Jewish critics of Israel and of herself as “Jewicidal.”

“We hear in Palestinian media calls for the genocide of the Jews and across the Arab media world,” Geller said in response to a question from NBC about how she felt when so many religious leaders consider AFDI ads hateful and damaging. “If these religious leaders really cared about hate, they’d be addressing this genocidal rhetoric … [That rhetoric] is the problem, not highlighting it.”