Activism

Ads Against Apartheid comes to Chicago’s south side

Check out the bright digital billboard in Chicago, on the I-294 Tollway near 95th. It asks, “When a country steals land does it really want peace? Freedom for Palestine now.”

The ad is the first since the announcement last month that Ads Against Apartheid (AAA) was taking its campaign national. It’s working with NotMyTax.com, part of American Muslims for Palestine.

Ads Against Apartheid is engaged in a war of words. It launched its initial “One Word” campaign on Boston’s MBTA in June, in response to Pamela Geller’s Islamophobic  American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) ads, as well as these ads from the Russian Jewish Community Foundation which ran in February, tweeted here:

BfkpvA5IIAAfpBTAds Against Apartheid’s co-founder Richard Colbath-Hess described this as part of an “ad war with Zionist groups in Boston”. But that campaign pales in comparison to the potential reach, and expense, of a national campaign he is mounting.

Geller and AFDI are reported to have paid $100,000 to run racist, anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim advertisements in two subway stations and 100 city buses. The latest effort is an ad comparing Hamas to those who beheaded American journalist James Foley. Many have denounced the ads for fostering hatred.

“Pamela Geller’s ads try to delegitimize the Palestinian struggle for freedom by implying that Palestinians and Muslims more broadly are savage and blood thirsty religious zealots. She actually uses the word “savage” in one of her ads,” said Colbath-Hess. “We can’t let her get away with this. We need to help people understand why Israeli oppression is the driver of Palestinian resistance.”

Ads Against Apartheid has an Indiegogo campaign to raise money for the ads, now in its last two weeks. It is specifically seeking to counter Geller’s racist rhetoric. For instance, “Islamic Jew Hatred: It’s in the Quran.”

This September, Ads Against Apartheid ran its land-theft/peace message in Boston’s Metro newspaper:

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The Jewish News Service responded with an ad asking Who is David and who is Goliath, contrasting Israel’s size to that of Arab countries. Haaretz has slammed the ad for merging occupied territories with Israel.

‘Pro-Israel’ now equals ‘Greater Israel’ in Boston’s subway map wars
A Jewish news organization trumpeting its ‘objective coverage’ of Israel is fueling the next round of the Israel-Palestine subway poster wars. Shame their map ‘forgets’ that Gaza and the West Bank aren’t Israel.

Ads Against Apartheid, has kept up with the competition in Boston, but challenging Geller in NYC is going to be a challenge. “She has dropped $100,000 on this campaign,” Colbath-Hess says. “We need people to contribute if we want to take a stand.”

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Poor little Massachusetts-sized Israel – a tiny blue dot in a sea of Arab green…errr…red. :-(

The ad talks about how big the Arab world is compared to Israel, but fails to point out that Israel is part of the Western world, and the Western world is MUCH bigger than the Arab world.

The real question, then, is: Will more land for the Western world really bring peace?

Even though I like the message of the anti-Apartheid ad more, the reality is that it was an ineffective ad. You have 4 seperate windows and 2 different websites. It is a giant kludge of a mess. The Zionist ad is more effective, it is a single-window, single-theme ad.

I’m guessing it is influenced by the infamous ad where you see Palestinian land disappear in successive steps.

That Zionist ad shows the lunacy of Zionism.
Reminds me of what Brzezinski said. The notion that a nation of 6 million disciplined people can control that area indefinitely using violence is insane.

Imagine the Hutus taking over 25000 square miles of Idaho and then advertising in Europe that the Americans have 49.5 other sates and that the hutus should have that one.

‘Will More Land for the Arabs Really Bring Peace?’

The Zionist Ad is really stretching their case. Mauritania is a separate state from Egypt, and so on. Zionists are getting more pathetic each passing year, and this graphic proves how desperate they’ve become. Why not show the entire world in RED letters…

The question posed should say:
‘will more land for Zionism and Israel bring peace and safety to the Jewish Stat?’

The “no smoking” sign below the ad is funny.

Do not smoke this shit, in other words