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AFDI ON THE OFFENSE: OUR FIGHT IS CRITICAL
Look back on 2014 — the Islamic State, beheadings, the war on Israel, sharia restrictions on free speech — and who is out there fighting the ideology behind the bloodshed and suppression? YOU and I are. Where are your donation dollars best spent? Let’s review what AFDI accomplished in the past few months in the the war of ideas. Scroll and then scroll some more.
This ad is going up on 100 buses in NYC this week. Today another Islamic group threatened to behead journalist Luke Somers. Could our ads be more timely?
If not now, when? If not YOU, who?
MEDIA FIRESTORM SURROUNDS OUR NEW JIHAD AWARENESS AD CAMPAIGN
As you know, AFDI is the only activist organization organizing protests and creating small groups across the country to fight Islamization in our schools and in the workplace, while running national ad campaigns, filing freedom of speech lawsuits that result in historic precedents, and editing and publishing the largest counter-jihad websites on the internet, Altas Shrugs and Jihad Watch.
Our social media footprint is huge, with well over 100,000 followers on twitter and 200,000 on Facebook. That’s powerful.
Our latest ad campaigns went viral, and as expected, the coverage was hostile. “Hating jihad,” went the New York Daily News headline. Are we supposed to love it? But because of the media’s frenzy to discredit and defame us, millions more people see our ads.
Another Daily News headline screams, “Shocking anti-Islam ad campaign coming to MTA buses, subway stations.” Shocking? Shocking is beheading journalists with six-inch knives. Shocking is kidnapping hundreds of non-Muslim girls, gang-raping them and selling them at slave markets. Shocking is one million Christians being ethnically cleansed or slaughtered from Syria. Shocking is thousands of American, European, Australian, Canadian Muslims flocking to Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State.
Shocking is the media’s deceitful and corrupt coverage of jihad. But our ads break through the media whitewash and deception to tell the whole truth, and get that truth out to millions.
And how the media establishment hates it!
Imagine: in the wake of beheaded journalists, a major newspaper called my ads “anti-Islam” and me a “notorious flamethrower.”
Our ads are designed to do what the media should be doing, but refuses to do: raise awareness about the nature of the jihad threat, the magnitude of that threat, and the need for Muslims in the US not just to issue vague condemnations of ISIS, but to teach young Muslims why this understanding of Islam is wrong and must be rejected.
Our ads are designed to put an end to the denial and willful ignorance about that threat, so that we can adopt effective counter-terror measures based on that realistic appraisal.
For that, I’m a “notorious flamethrower,” according to the guardians and shapers of American public opinion. That’s why our ads are needed more than ever.
The enemy disinformation campaigners (CAIR, ISNA, Media Matters, the Center for American Progress, American Muslims for Palestine) have tens of millions of dollars to spread their lies. Over the past five years, they’ve spent hundreds of millions.
AFDI is out there alone countering them with the truth. The whole truth that the media won’t tell you and all too many “conservative” groups fear to tell you. They’re afraid the media will call them “racists” and “bigots” — so afraid they’re willing to compromise with the truth.
The truth is not “racism” and “bigotry.” And we’re going to keep getting it out to the American people and the world, no matter what the enablers of jihad terror call us.
When the liars lie, AFDI is there with the truth.
AFDI is everywhere.
This war of ideas must be fought head-on. And we must fight now, while the lies and the libels are flying thick and fast.
AFDI is fighting the war in the information battlespace on the streets, in the media, on social media and on buses and subways.
For that, WE NEED YOUR HELP. We need to get our new ad campaigns up in NYC, DC, Chicago, Miami, Houston, and Jacksonville. We need to expand our truth-telling campaigns even more widely in 2015.
Please CONTRIBUTE HERE.
OR SEND A CHECK TO:
AFDI
Attention: Pamela Geller
1040 1st Avenue #121
New York, N.Y. 10022
We are a 501C3
Here are some of the details of our ad campaigns and the ensuing media and court battles:
I. The Islamic Jew-hatred ad
We rolled out this ad all over New York City and Washington, DC:
The media was, of course, furious. The New York Post called AFDI an “anti-Islamic group.” The Belfast Telegraph, the Jewish Daily Forward, Fox News New York and even the generally conservative-leaning Washington Times dubbed the ads “anti-Islam ads” — instead of calling on Muslims of good will to reform Islam’s anti-Semitic teachings. For Design & Trend and International Business Times also, the ad was “anti-Islamic.”
Washington’s CBS Local ran a headline that was fairly even-handed: DC Bus Ads Featuring Hitler Call For End To US Aid To Islamic Countries. So did USA Today: ‘Islamic Jew-hatred’ bus ads featuring Hitler roll out on DC streets. World Bulletin had: Washington DC bus ads urge aid cut for Muslim countries. Conservative Newsmax reported: Ads on DC Buses Show Hitler With Muslim Leader. Shalom Life: Pro-Israel Group Features Hitler on New Bus Ads. Fox Washington DC: Hitler’s face to display on DC bus advertisements. Sky News Australia: ‘Islamic Jew-hatred’ ads appear in US. Examiner.com: Washington, DC bus ad resurrects memory of forgotten Muslim SS Division. Complex.com: D.C. Buses to Feature Hitler for the Next Month. Even Russia Today: ‘Islamic Jew-hatred’ ads with Hitler adorn DC buses.
But they were the exception. The Washington Post, Al Jazeera and Headlines & Global News called the ads “anti-Muslim,” as if subscribing to the “Islamophobic” idea that it is “anti-Muslim” to wish to reform Islam of anti-Semitism and hold Muslim countries responsible for propagating anti-Semitism. Huffington Post UK was outraged. Raw Story called me an Anti-Muslim Long Island blogger. In an editorial, the Washington Post huffed: Hitler belongs in history books, not on bus ads. Arutz Sheva warned: Controversial Bus Ads Compare Islam with Hitler. The Times of Israel whined about Seeing Hitler on your daily commute. Onislam.net raged: Inflammatory Bus Ads Link Islam to Hitler. Iran’s Ahlul Bayt News Agency fumed: Hitler’s face to appear on side of 20 buses for a month in Washington DC.
After the ads had been up for a few days, the Washington City Paper gleefully reported on More Condemnation for Hitler Bus Ads. Haaretz crowed that the ADL slams anti-Muslim ad campaign in Washington. DCist.com was likewise thrilled that The Anti-Defamation League Doesn’t Like Pamela Geller’s Anti-Muslim Ad.
None of these enraged media outlets was nearly as upset by the vile anti-Semitic ad to which we were responding. Our ad was a response to viciously anti-Semitic ads (bottom photo) that ran on Washington, DC buses. This was part of a systematic campaign by many different Islamic and leftist groups to dehumanize and demonize the Jewish state.
We submitted our ad to run on the same bus lines, on the same city streets, and in the same venues as the Islamic Jew-hatred ad.
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) was the sponsor of that Jew-hating ad, which evokes the ugly antisemitic stereotypes in which Jew-haters have long trafficked. The AMP is run by Dr. Hatem Bazian, a University of California-Berkeley professor who equated the Boston jihad bombings with “Islamophobia.”
For years, ads like this one have run unchallenged. But this time, we were there. Their lies did not stand unchallenged.
We are still fighting to run the same ad in Philadelphia:
This week a judge ruled in our favor in our Pennslyvania lawsuit and this was today’s lede story at Keystone:
Islamic Jew-hatred ad gets judicial support
Federal judge denies SEPTA witness to testify against anti-Islam ads
December 3, 2014 By Jim Boyle
U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg would not allow posted on transit vehicles and other region-wide property has been denied by a federal district judge, who says that allegedly false material remains protected by the First Amendment.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is an early victory for the plaintiffs, Pamela Geller, the president of American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), and the group’s vice president Robert Spencer. They claim that SEPTA is a government entity and has an obligation to respect their organization’s First Amendment right to free speech. Joseph Casey, general manager of SEPTA, arbitrarily rejected the advertisement because he disagreed with the message, and not because it violated their standards of use, the complaint says.
The Washington Post on our legal victory:
II. The Islamophobia ad
The Muslim groups that complain most loudly about “Islamophobia,” such as the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), have opposed every counter-terror program that has ever been proposed or implemented.
They call counter-terror measures “Islamophobic.” This ad shows the reality behind that cynical propaganda ploy.
“ISLAMOPHOBIA”?
Today a different Islamic group threatened to behead another American journalist. What’s it going to take to get people to address this grave threat?
More ads.
This AFDI ad campaign is designed to show the absurdity of the mainstream media focus on “Islamophobia” amid growing jihad violence worldwide.
The charge of “Islamophobia” is used to intimidate people into thinking there is something wrong with opposing jihad violence.
III. The CAIR campaign
Not just the media, but corrupt political elites are desperate to silence us. The Washington D.C. City Council passed a resolution against AFDI’s pro-Israel ads.
As whole swaths of the Middle East and Africa fell to Islamic supremacists, and our closest ally in the Middle East was being attacked on four fronts from Jew-hating Muslims on a jihad to annihilate the Jewish state, the Washington D.C. city council did the bidding of Hamas organizations here in the US.
Hamas-tied CAIR, meanwhile, responded to my ad campaign exposing Islamic Jew-hatred with a deceptive and dishonest propaganda campaign of its own.
CAIR’s campaign featured this Qur’an verse:
“Those who have attained to faith, as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the Christians all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds shall have their reward with their Sustainer, and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve” (2:62).
What CAIR doesn’t tell you, however, is that this verse only applies, according to Islamic authorities, to Jews and Christians who convert to Islam, as is confirmed by Quran 3:85: “Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the hereafter he will be one of the losers.” The Jews and Christians (People of the Book) who do not become Muslims are the worst of creatures: “Verily, those who disbelieve from among the People of the Book and the idolaters, will be in the Fire of Hell, abiding therein. They are the worst of creatures” (Quran 98:6).
An early Islamic authority and cousin of Muhammad, Ibn Abbas, says this verse was abrogated by Quran 3:85: “Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the hereafter he will be one of the losers.
CAIR knows this, and is trying to deceive gullible non-Muslims.
And so we launched a NEW AFDI ad campaign: “The Truth About CAIR,” on New York City trains and Washington, DC buses:
CAIR, the leading Muslim Brotherhood-tied organization in America has deceived the media, cultural and political elites in America for years, to the great peril of the American people. Despite the overwhelming evidence presented in the largest terrorist funding trial in our nation’s history, the Holy Land foundation trial, the sharia-compliant media has continued to advance Hamas-CAIR’s supremacist agenda, with willing help from all too many law enforcement and government officials.
CAIR’s influence is vast, and growing all the time. Recently they got ABC Family to drop its projected show Alice In Arabia, solely because it contained some dramatization of the all-too-common phenomenon of child kidnapping by Muslim relatives. For years now, they have prevailed upon Hollywood to downplay or even change the identity of celluloid villains, so that Muslims are never portrayed negatively in films (thus the Muslim terrorists in the novel The Sum of All Fears became neo-Nazis in the movie).
Gentleman on the left reads the ad while making his way
Third Avenue
We bought the highest traffic Metro DC stations – the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, Capitol South, Bethesda, L’Enfant Plaza, Vienna, Shady Grove, Wells Fall Church, New Carrollton.
The ad depicts several CAIR officials who have been arrested and convicted of terror-related crimes. CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case –so named by the Justice Department during the trial of the Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation.
CAIR has a long record of duplicity and deception. Although it has received millions of dollars in donations from foreign Islamic entities, it has not registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), despite spreading Islamic supremacist propaganda within the United States.
Although it presents itself as a civil rights group, CAIR actually has numerous links to Islamic supremacist and jihad groups. CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR’s executive director), were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East. CAIR has steadfastly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror.
IV. The pro-Israel marches and rallies
Also in 2014, AFDI helped organize pro-Israel marches in New York City.
Part of Hamas’s war effort were death marches staged across major cities in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, etc. in support of Islamic terror against the Jewish state.
They were as much a part of the war against Israel as Hamas rockets.
Many of these hatefests were violent. Attacks on Jews became commonplace. That is why we countered with a strong message of support and love for the state of Israel.
Despite threats of violence, the huge rally we helped organize for Israel drew tens of thousands of Israel lovers. What an awesome sight. The event was under the hashtag #NYClovesIsrael — and we tweeted it, posted it, shared it all over social media. We let Israel know she was not alone in the fight for freedom and life. And it went viral.
Because of bomb threats, we had to hire private security for the event, at tremendous expense.
We also hired private security for a counter protest against the ugly pro-Hamas hatefest at the Israel consulate. There were too many young Jewish students to risk a confrontation with these violent thugs against Israel.
Before our event, I received savage threats of carnage and violence.
Threats like this were coming in prior to our event.
And this:
Their threats be damned. The NYPD and the FBI were very responsive, and acted quickly and decisively to protect the rally. We also hired additional security of our own (who worked closely with law enforcement), and the event went off without a hitch. I was honored to speak before a crowd of 10,000 lovers of freedom:
Happy warriors
We also countered the haters at the Israeli consulate, and we will continue to protest the hate and violence.
WE WERE THERE.
We stood together against the jihad against the Jews, Christians, Hindus, Yazidis, Chaldeans, Buddhists and all other religious minorities.
We told the truth: Hamas is the “Palestinian” version of ISIS (and Boko Haram, Hezb’Allah, Al-Qaeda, et al).
It is the same fight, the same struggle and freedom loving peoples united to defeat it under the AFDI banner on Sunday, August 17, in New York City’s Union Square. Speakers from a huge variety of backgrounds stood for Israel and all the minority populations worldwide that are threatened by the global jihad.
Speakers included Robert Spencer and me from AFDI, along with Sudanese freedom activist Simon Deng; Ashraf Ramelah, the head of Voice of the Copts; Haider Elias, a leader of the Yazidi community; Israeli scholar Mordechai Kedar, and a host of others representing the populations around the world that face the greatest threat today from Islamic jihad violence and supremacism.
Staging this kind of rally is a massive undertaking. But it is critical that we wage this war in the information battlespace. All too few people realize that Israel faces the same foe that is massacring Yazidis in Iraq, Buddhists in Thailand, Christians in Nigeria, and so many others elsewhere – including 3,000 Americans on 9/11. And it is imperative that we stand together to face this threat, for united we are so much more powerful than we are when separated.
That’s why our rally was so important, and why the leftist media was (predictably) in a frenzy to discredit it. The Huffington Post headlined its hit piece “Pamela Geller, ‘Anti-Muslim Hate Group’ Leader Banned From UK, Holds Pro-Israel Rally In NY.” So opposing the oppression and genocide against the Yazidis and others is “anti-Muslim” — and apparently the Huffington Post is on the side of the slaughterers. And pointing out that I am banned in the UK? That is a moment of shame not for me, but for Britain. Any liberal, thinking, freedom-loving human being knows how wrong it is to ban a human rights activist who stands for freedom and individual rights against oppression and subjugation.
But this is how the enemedia works: to keep the truth from being heard, they smear the truth-tellers. Smearing and sneering are all they can do. Another report was sneeringly headlined, “Pamela Geller Holds Rally in NYC Against ‘Persecuting Jihadists,’ Most NYers Can’t Bother to Be Outraged.”
No “journalist” saw fit to report on the groundbreaking convergence and coalition of all the victims of jihad. None even quoted anything any of our speakers said, even to refute it.
But this media rage and contempt shows that we’re making headway: they don’t bother to try to destroy those who are not effective.
If we don’t speak out, the liars and jihad enablers of the Huffington Post and other leftist media outlets will stand unchallenged. We are unique at AFDI in our ability to challenge media lies in a way that gets the truth out and helps stem the tide against freedom.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar flew in from Israel, Sudan leader of the Freedom Movement Simon Deng, Pamela Geller
New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind
V. Fighting antisemitism in Boston
This year also, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) accepted yet another vicious antisemitic campaign to run on Boston subway platforms. This was not the first blood libel against the Jews that Boston authorities have run.
This was the same antisemitic authority that refused to run our pro-Israel ads after they ran a different Jew-hating campaign. We are currently embroiled in a lawsuit against the MBTA for violating our First Amendment rights. They should also be sued for race-based Jew-hatred. They allow vicious antisemitic libels but refuse a Jewish defense ad.
These antisemitic ads make numerous false claims. They charge that there are “Jewish-only” cities in Israel; there are no such cities, but numerous Palestinian officials, including Mahmoud Abbas, have declared that no Jew will be allowed to live in a Palestinian State. These ads are a total inversion of reality. But the MBTA lets their lies stand and refused our truth.
We submitted six different Islamic Jew-hatred and Islamic apartheid ads to run on Boston buses and subways.
VI. The Pro-Israel ad and social media campaign
Wherever the media tells lies, we are there with the truth. When Hamas committed one of its numerous ceasefire violations and fired rockets into Israel, almost immediately the enemedia sprang into action, with headlines blaring: “Gaza Fighting Resumes…” AFDI was there immediately, countering these tweets and Facebook posts, retweeting the truth to counter these fallacious messages from AP and Reuters to our hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook and Twitter. “Tell it straight: HAMAS BROKE CEASEFIRE”:
At the same time, we rolled out a new pro-Israel campaign on 100 New York City bus tails and urban panels at Columbus Circle and 59th Street. We were everywhere with the truth — as always.
One of these ads featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trenchant words about Hamas and civilians:
Another of these ads highlighted Christian persecution under Islam. One million Christians have been killed or have had to flee Iraq because of persecution by jihadists. When was the last time you heard about that on the nightly news?
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The other featured ads include some of our most notorious and controversial presentations — notorious and controversial, that is, in the eyes of a compromised and corrupt media determined to pimp for jihadists and Jew-haters. They included these:
And these were the urban panels that went up on Columbus Circle and 59th Street, where they were seen by hundreds of thousands daily:
VII. The “Killing Jews is worship” ad
We are suing the NYC MTA for refusing this ad containing an authentic statement from the jihad terror group Hamas:
In front of the courthouse the day of our filing
“Lawsuit Filed After ‘Killing Jews’ Ads Rejected,” NEW YORK — Oct 1, 2014, 8:41 PM ET
By Larry Nuemeister, Associated Press
“Pamela Geller-led Group Sues MTA Over ‘Killing Jews’ Ad”, The Jewish Week, 10/08/14
VIII. The Edmonton lawsuit
Meanwhile, in Canada, we filed a lawsuit against the city of Edmonton, Ontario. I will going to Edmonton to be cross examined in January.
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