King County, WA, is being sued by the Seattle Mid East Awareness Campaign because it would not let Israeli War Crimes ads go on the sides of buses. From the Post-Intelligencer account, it sure sounds like the county was manipulated, or that it allowed itself to be manipulated. The P-I:
King County worried about civil disobedience, violence and even “terrorist activity” if ads critical of Israel ran on the side of Metro buses, a federal judge was told Monday.
But an attorney for a group that wanted to run ads that said “Israeli War Crimes Your Tax Dollars At Work” said the county’s fears were overblown and that it had allowed controversial messages to run on buses before…
The County couldn’t fully quantify the number of complaints and threats, something [Seattle MidEast Awareness Campaign attorney Jeffrey] Grant seized on. He said he only identified 37 threatening e-mails. He also said only about 20 members of the county’s bus drivers’ union complained – out of about 4,000 active members.
[County attorney Endel] Kolde said the furor over the ads had been referenced on a website run by Hamas, the Palestinian group that has been classified a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.
