The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority has placed ads on its buses condemning the racist Savage ads placed last week by Islamophobe Pamela Geller.
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Muni has taken the unprecedented step of condemning one of the paid advertisements on several of its buses. It all started with a controversial ad in support of Israel that included some hot-button words like “jihad’ and “savages.” Friday, the transit agency got involved with its own counter-ad.
The dueling ads appear almost side-by-side on 10 Muni buses. The original ad popped up last week reading “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”
…..
“Obviously we think the ads in place right now are repulsive and they definitely cross the line,” Muni spokesperson Paul Rose said. “So there’s not a lot we can do in light of the First Amendment.”
…
Pamela Geller of New York heads the group and she says she’s now planning another Muni bus ad.
“Those ads will be calling out the institutionalized and systemic anti-Semitism of the government of San Francisco,” she said. “They’re clearly picking sides. They should be running disclaimers on every ad, not just mine.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations welcomes Muni’s counter-ad as a step in the right direction.
“A lot of the damage has already been done; we have heard from many community members both at our organization and other organizations across the Bay Area who say they don’t feel comfortable boarding the buses that carry these ads,” CAIR spokesperson Zahra Billoo said.
…..
“We have seen an increase in fundraising, absolutely, absolutely,” Geller said. “What do you think has paid for my counter ads to the discrimination ads that are running counter to my ads?”
“This is someone who’s thriving on creating fear of millions, if not billions, of Arabs and Muslims across the world,” Billoo said.
Geller says her Muni ad campaign cost about $5,000 and is her First Amendment right. Friday, CAIR sent a letter to Muni asking that the money be used to study the impact of what it calls “hate speech” on Muslim residents of San Francisco.
Geller says donations are flowing in and will pay for her new ad.
Geller:
Those ads will be calling out the institutionalized and systematic anti semitism of the government of San Francisco.
CAIR’s Zahra Billoo is right on the money pointing out Geller is “thriving on creating fear.”
The new ads were placed as a result of pressure brought to bear by a coalition of organizations lead by the American Muslims for Palestine, the Council of American Islamic Relations, the Asian Law Caucus and Jewish Voices for Peace. Letters to Muni with specific demands for further work to combat anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias in San Francisco were signed by at least 75 organizations and community leaders.
“We consider this to be a major victory,” said AMP Chairman Dr. Hatem Bazian. “But more work obviously needs to be done. We are continuing our talks with the transportation authority. This comes at a time when at least eight or nine attacks against Muslims have occurred recently throughout the country, the most recent being the descretation of the gravesight of an Arab American community leader in the Chicago this weekend.”
This August 17th video report documents several attacks on Muslims in the US during only one week of Ramadan. I urge everyone to watch it.
Drip drip drip….
Smart move by Muni.
I don’t know where Geller gets antisemitism from in her response.
I think she’s a great spokesperson for bigotry and racism. Doesn’t she realise that she does more harm than good to her cause?
More please Polythene Pam!
If someone steps on her toe it’s antisemitism.
“Those ads will be calling out the institutionalized and systemic anti-Semitism of the government of San Francisco,”
Not just anti, oh how about just A-S, but “Institutionalised” and “systemic” A-S. Now, I remember those words “institutionalised” and “systemic” from many legal battles surrounding Civil Rights and Affirmative Action. So what is “institutionalised’ and “systemic” should be pretty well defined by now.
Yep, she’ll have fun substantiating those two charges.
“the institutionalized and systemic anti-Semitism of the government of San Francisco”
I’ve visited SF a couple of times, and I noticed that nearly all the members of the chain gangs working in the city had yellow stars sewn onto their clothing.
It’s not funny. A sikh was murdered recently in Wisconsin because there are too many ignorant people who believe Muslims are evil thanks to the hate speech of people like Geller and the employees of the Israeli embassy, not to mention the shock Jocks and the rest of the right wing echo chamber . And Sikhs wear turbans so they must be Muslims. It’s a very dark time for tolerance. I wonder did Ben Gurion ever wonder how his altneuland would end up.
seafoid, did you watch the last video in the post? really horrible.
Thanks for the link, annie. It is so sad to see so many incidents in so many states.
I still don’t grok how a company can be forced to run an ad it finds offensive. The fact that you have money, and the right to say what you want, doesn’t obligate me to run an ad on my property. I know that Geller wouldn’t be able to run that ad in my nation; she’d be had up on charges of spreading hate towards others.
As much as I don’t like laws that restrict free speech, I do not want ads like this one on my busses.
Not a “company,” a governmental entity.
Ummm, from my pov. A government run corporation is not that different from a privately owned one. They’re still responsible to their owners, they need to generate a profit (or be subsidized). The gov’t run corp should be run in the public interest. I don’t think it’s in the government’s interest to generate hate towards people, it leads to bad things.
If unlimited freedom of speech is guaranteed in SF, we win. They can’t reject our ad next time.
Also, the counter-ad is tremendously more efficient in creating the right kind of awareness than just banning a Geller ad.
I still don’t grok how a company can be forced to run an ad it finds offensive.
i do not know if they were ‘forced’ per se karl, but given the ny federal court ruling (open the first link in the post) my hunch is the city was avoiding litigation. she also said she would have sued them just like she did in ny.
You guys down south really need to make the loser pay when their civil suits fail. It would cut down on a lot of that sort of thing. :)
I think in avoiding this litigation, they’ve ended up setting many lures for more forms of this ad. How ugly will it get before someone decides to use the available firearm to deal with the advertized ‘Threat’?
“You guys down south really need to make the loser pay when their civil suits fail. It would cut down on a lot of that sort of thing. :)”
No thanks. American rich people and corporations get enough welfare from the government. The last thing we need is to give them a “get out of litigation” card, too.
Ummm, not really. It does mean that the loser of the court case pays all the legal bills. So if you have a lame reason to go to court, you’ll end up paying more than someone who actually has a wrong. (that’s the theory, it seems to work more often than not.)
Dubhe says: “I still don’t grok how a company can be forced to run an ad it finds offensive. The fact that you have money, and the right to say what you want, doesn’t obligate me to run an ad on my property. I know that Geller wouldn’t be able to run that ad in my nation; she’d be had up on charges of spreading hate towards others.
As much as I don’t like laws that restrict free speech, I do not want ads like this one on my busses.”
My suspicion is that enough people were pro-Israel enough that either they saw nothing wrong with the ad, or they were all too willing to succumb to the argument of ‘free speech.’
Whatever. They got called on it. Now to counter…
Muni disclaiming Geller’s savages ad is a good sign, maybe the country isn’t as done for as it seems sometimes. In fact when people see the ‘savages’ ad and then see Muni’s ad beside it, that might even be better than a counter ad by oppposing groups.
And this was posted by Peter Beinart on the Daily Beast
How Will We Sleep Tonight?
by Emily Hauser
As a writer and activist, I’m forever asking people to consider the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from another perspective—whatever perspective they might happen to have.
And so today I ask: What would Israel, the Israeli people, and American Jews be doing if the following news reports concerned an Israeli family and three Israeli young men?
link to thedailybeast.com
I don’t believe anyone is savage other than Nazis like Geller.
The Native Americans were right about the white people.
They destroyed the land.
I was at a street party last night. Fish and chips with fish from the south east atlantic. There is no fishing left in the north atlantic. Civilisation is a thin veneer, really.
That’s what the white cattlemen said about the white homesteaders.
Citizen, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
@ Mooser
Not in Sagebrush Cinema. Haven’t you ever seen Shane?
>> Civilisation is a thin veneer, really.
Yup. I hope I never get the chance to experience a months-long, continent-wide power outage in North America during Winter.
I’m thinking I’d rather deal with that than the same thing in summer. I can burn the furniture and bundle up. The food won’t rot if it’s frozen.
But goddamn, turn the freaking heat off! I’ve had enough of summer, and it’s barely hit 99 degrees up here. :)
I am so proud of my city!
And check this out: link to desertpeace.wordpress.com
Pam Geller is going to run a counter-ad to the Muni ads, complaining that SF is enforcing sharia law by denouncing her ad:
link to atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com
Just when you thought this woman could not get more unhinged, she proves you wrong.
Wow. There’s something in Sharia about disclaimers? Impressive. I was also wondering whether PG had any more examples of anti-Semitism in SF government. Don’t you need more than one instance of something to make it “systemic and institutionalized”? Speaking of which, why is “We oppose the systemic and institutionalized anti-Semitism in the government of San Francisco” in quotation marks? Is she quoting someone? Herself? No wonder Atlas shrugs in PG’s company. I bet he also whacks his forehead and mutters obscenities.
Shmuel, don’t you recognise that language? It’s straight out of a civil-rights decision on hiring or earlier, segregation laws. I think it’s the criteria for having an actionable civil-rights or discrimination complaint, or the standard for applying legal remedies to these things.
Isn’t it amazing, and really so sad, that when she is reaching for language to describe how she sees this as an offense against her, she comes up with this? Or did she consult a lawyer with a sense of humor?
Geller calls Arizona attorney David Yarushalmi her “legal advisor.” Not noted for his sense humor, except perhaps in some inner circle.
@ Mooser
Yeah, she chose this lawyer, from the great ivy league law school at Arizona state: link to loonwatch.com
Didn’t he win in the ad case against NYC Metro line?
Maybe she figures she’s one of the victims of disparate impact?
“Geller calls Arizona attorney David Yarushalmi her “legal advisor.” Not noted for his sense humor, except perhaps in some inner circle.”
Is it possible he used this phrase and she repeated it? It’s a very evocative phrase, wasn’t it the judicial condemnation in discrimination-in-hiring and other cases?
I got sucked into doing research into her relationship with Yarushalmi when they both testified before the Alaska Legislature on Yarushalmi’s boiler-plate AK legislation on Sharia law. Thanks to the efforts of some conscientious Alaskans to reach other members of the committee considering the whack-job bill, it died in the last session. Its prime sponsor, Rep. Carl Gatto, has also passed away.
‘I bet he also whacks his forehead and mutters obscenities.’
No matter how many times he whacks it, it’ll never be as botox laced and line free as Pammy’s.
Not a look that anyone’s gone for since Michael Jackson.
Just sayin’
“Pam Geller is going to run a counter-ad to the Muni ads, complaining that SF is enforcing sharia law by denouncing her ad:
link to atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com
Just when you thought this woman could not get more unhinged, she proves you wrong.”
This is good. What can we do to ensure she actually follows through?
Lemme check something here…
Oh well. The blue screws things up. Otherwise, she’d have picked the colors of the Nazi flag.
omg she’s such a fruitcake. mana from heaven couldn’t manufacture this kind of resistance sans..her. the gift that keeps on giving.
The battling ads are on again on the MIT in NY, same foes; and as the court rulings come down, each side is adapting its ad v ad accordingly: link to cbsnews.com
“I don’t believe anyone is savage other than Nazis like Geller.
The Native Americans were right about the white people.
They destroyed the land.”
Seafoid in many respects I agree with your paragraph. And your use of the word “Nazi” is tolerable to me in the context of your paragraph and this private blog. Geller is of course terribly insensitive not only to the Palestinian people but also to what she is doing to political discourse in public space. To go to her level of political discourse ultimately can hurt in time any group, and particularly Jews if they would become more “out of fashion” again. Of course the Jewish Community Relations Council has some understanding of this, if in deed it may seem to many of us that they agree with Geller.
But I also have a deeper concern about your understandable emotional use of the word “Nazi.” I do not think in the organized Jewish Community within all of its institutions there has every be a serious discussion about the politics in German society that made Nazism and its destruction possible. (Except perhaps old Catholic antisemitism.) Namely a society moving so far to the right to protect the wealthy that it has to squeeze out part of its population as a victim. Jews understand of course the “victim-hood.” So we have the state, Israel, as a response. However now we have this state with total blindness as to what fully happened in Germany and with moral blindness in consigning and moving out another people by the Jewish people. A former victim justifies creating another victim because of what happened to them some place else. In the sphere of “Jewish defense” all tools are permissible even if the tool has been found inappropriate in other spheres. In this case this means dehumanizing the new victim, the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors. (And of course the Palestinians make it easy for the Jews sometimes, in the course of being driven nuts by Israeli government and settler policies and actions, some among them have acted out in violent suicide bombings. If only the Israeli government and settlers could wake up and see if their more violent actions where to cease through serious negotiation and agreed plans, the Palestinian violence would stop.) What would it take then for Jews to perceive a broader understanding of the Holocaust besides victim-hood? And what would it take for Jews to perceive that something different than what is in many respects another reactionary country being the answer to the Holocaust? Is the Jewish Community of Israel/Palestine capable of re-understanding and renegotiating it’s place in that land space?
Maybe for me I can answer these questions too easily. Having be raised in a Jewish institution I understand the often ineptness and often lack of serious concern of the wealthy establishment. Also I had one relative who was involved in a resistance group group in Germany during World War II and paid the price. The group was not Zionist and it was not good at violence. I do understand the emotion of wanting to call those like Geller a Nazi. To get beyond that I suggest we think in terms of not protecting the wealthy as such and more broadly how to create a society which protects us all and where we can take care of each other. How do we get to a human society where we get beyond creating the next victim based on economic desperation and prejudice? Insisting on raising the discourse on every deeper levels is a first step.
Thank you Annie Robbins for covering this Muni story and trying to raise the discourse.
Geller is a hate monger. She thrives in the darkness of ignorance and hatred. That is where the Nazis were.
Israel needs decent people, not purveyors of hatred. Judaism can’t win in the darkness. It didn’t last this long to fall for people like Geller and Netanyahu.
“Geller is a hate monger. She thrives in the darkness of ignorance and hatred. That is where the Nazis were.
Israel needs decent people, not purveyors of hatred. Judaism can’t win in the darkness. It didn’t last this long to fall for people like Geller and Netanyahu.”
I disagree. Decent people are the enemies of Israel. Israel needs purveyors of hatred.
To “Baruch B”
Blah, blah, blah. Excuse my French.
What’s your problem with talking of Nazism?
Open contempt of international law? Check.
Glorification of aggression and uncamouflaged war of aggression? Check.
Limitlessly brutal military occupation? Check.
Abolition of the Rule of Law? Check, and how.
Ruthless police state? Check.
Capitalism running amok? Check.
Official definition of the state as belonging to a given ethnic group? Check.
Spoliation and annihilation of all other ethnic groups (in this case the owners of the land)? Check.
Glorification of murder and international terrorism? Check.
A doctrine of phony racial nationalism? The very same one!
Plus a theocratic state and a number of other things that the “original” Nazis didn’t have.
They aren’t done yet, so we don’t know yet about the full efficiency of the extermination methods.
If you have a problem calling things by their name, change yours to Barack. My (elderly) generation only understands things when compared to the German occupation and the Resistance. Things that you don’t seem to be able to understand.
Before I forget: The Germans (the White and racially pure, too) had to yield to a brutal military dictatorship. The Whites in the Zionist entity had a choice and continue to vote.
Geller has bus ad form
Leaving Islam?
link to youtube.com
If she had been born Serb she would have been a radio queen for Milosevic in the 90s. She is vile.
But she is not alone
link to youtube.com
“Those ads will be calling out the institutionalized and systemic anti-Semitism of the government of San Francisco…”
Considering the ethnic make-up and political outlook of San Francisco, this is about like denouncing the Pope’s atheism. It’s a really silly accusation. She might as well go on to complain about the long hot summers there.
I have my complaints about San Francisco myself, but at least they relate to what the city is. Geller’s remark is just blind flailing. It has no connection to reality.
Please, pretty please, oh god, please: lots more air time in SF and in fact nationwide for Pam Geller. No one could drive more people into the broad MondoWeiss/Electronic Intifada camp than la Geller, who comes across every bit as irrational, as repellent, as toxically wackadoodle, as her own message of hate, and for that matter as Washington’s hateful/sadistic/destructive/self-destructive policy towards Israel and Palestine.
A bit of justice.
In an 14 August 2002 interview with American journalist Amy Goodman, Shulamit Aloni described how she believes the charge of antisemitism is used to suppress criticism of Israel
Amy Goodman: Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called anti-semitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew ?
Aloni: Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic.
@ Reality Check
I think it’s been used as more than that. I stumbled on the archives at the JTA, had never noticed their archive section before, and started reading thru them beginning in 1923, which was when the JTA started I guess.
There was coverage of some things obviously anti semitic but I was struck by how anti semtism was blamed for some things that were obviously conflicts between Jews and non Jews or governments on strictly political and economic and labor issues.
In Romania in 1929 for instance Jews had their own Jewish Labor Union and wanted the Romanian government to give Jewish labor Unions special minority status as protected workers. The government balked at doing this on the grounds giving any workers ‘union’ a special status would be unfair overall and lead to conflicts and labor wars..and then was accused of anti semitism because it wouldnt’ grant that to the Jewish Union. That looked to me a plain case of one labor group jockeying for more clout than the others and nothing to do with denying it out of Jew hatred.
Another thing that struck me was the all the reports on various governments that were constantly ‘condemning’ anti semitism and prosecuting anti semites. To hear some zionist tell it, every country on earth had anti semitic policies and persecuted Jews or ignored their persecution.
I found one amusing enough to save it because it was a case of anti immigration, much like some of the anti immigrant positions here on how immigrants take jobs from Americans and Mexicans were protesting about how the wave of immigrants were ruining their market livihoods……but the Jewish orgs in the US called it anti semitism and wanted the US to intervene “against” Mexico. LOL
link to archive.jta.org
May 9, 1931
American Intervention Against Mexico Called For: Washington State Department Cables to American Amba
New York, May. 7 (JTA) –
The Order B’nai B’rith in America, (which played an important part in furthering Jewish settlement in Mexico in the early days of immigration in 1925) has submitted to the U.S. State Secretary, Mr. Stimson, a strongly worded protest against the wave of anti-Jewish discrimination in Mexico, asking the United States Government to intervene with the Mexican Government to put a stop to it.
The “Washington State Department has wired to the American Ambassador in Mexico instructing him to investigate the reports of ill-treatment of Jews, with a view to determining if any American citizens are involved. If no American citizens are involved, it will be difficult for the American Government to make any representations, on account of international usage.
The fact that the American Government has found it necessary to look into the matter, it is pointed out, how ever, will probably have a moral effect upon the Mexican Government.”
I live in Oakland and will be calling Muni to thank them…
thanks for this Annie. Pam Geller should be systematically institutionalized for her mental condition that has and continues to be extremely dangerous to others.
Agreed, Kathleen. She shouldn’t be allowed near the media.
# A few Pamela Geller supporters and enablers
1. American Thinker
2. Anders Breivik
3. Andrew Breitbart
4. Christopher Ruddy
5. Daniel Pipes
6. David Horowitz
7. Dennis Prager
8. David Yerushalmi
9. Dick Morris
10. Donald Rumsfeld
11. Dore Gold
12. EDL (English Defence League)
13. Eric Cantor
14. Fox News
15. Frontpage Magazine
16. Gates of Vienna
17. Geert Wilders
18. Glenn Beck
19. Gordon Liddy
20. Jihad Watch
21. John Bolton
22. Mark Steyn
23. Michael Coren
24. Mike Huckabee
25. Newsmax
26. Pajamas Media
27. Richard Mellon Scaife
28. Robert Spencer
29. Rupert Murdoch
30. Sarah Palin
31. Sean Hannity
32. Worldnetdaily
33. Yid With Lid
Please sign the petition to remove racist and islamophobic signs at NY metro north train stops:
link to change.org