Telling the truth in Seattle

By Pamela Geller

There is another vicious lie of an ad campaign going up in Seattle. Once again the Jew-haters are exposing themselves for the sick and depraved lot they are. And once again, my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, or AFDI, is countering the lies with the truth.

A vicious, anti-Israel group is running an ad that reads: “Equal Rights for Palestinians: The Way to Peace.” This ad is a lie. In Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the founders determined that their nation would be a Jewish state that offers equal rights to its Arab citizens. Arab and Muslim Israelis can study in Hebrew language schools if they wish. They can live in Israeli towns. Arab Israelis have full political and civil rights in Israel. There are Arab Muslim Israelis serving in the Knesset.

If the Palestinians were to come under Israeli sovereignty, they would also have equal rights with Israelis – and make up but a third of the population. Both Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. favorite Salam Fayyad have gone on record saying that no Jews will be allowed to live in Palestine, and that all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and Jewish neighborhoods built in post-1967 Jerusalem will have to be emptied out before they will accept their state.

They are, in other words, demanding a judenrein state.

Meanwhile, the Muslim minority in Israel identifies with active enemies of its state, such as the terror organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. The actual “way to peace” is for these jihad terror groups and those who support them to recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist and to expunge the Quran and Hadith of the violent, Jew-hating texts that exhort Muslims to commit genocide.

You see no such equality for Jews (or Christians or non-Muslims) under the Shariah in Muslim countries. There are no equal rights for women or religious minorities in Gaza or in any country where the Shariah is the rule of law.

And so I submitted our counter ad to Seattle’s King County Metro Transit. It reads: “The Palestinian Authority Is Calling For A Jew-Free State: Equal Rights For Jews.” After dragging its feet for several weeks, King County Metro Transit at long last agreed to run our pro-Israel advertisement on its public transportation buses – after facing the threat of legal action.

Our ads finally went up Thursday in Seattle. And immediately the smears and disinformation from the enemedia began. A Fox News report never bothered to mention the anti-Jewish ads that prompted our pro-Israel response campaign. Neither did any of the other media coverage.

Even worse, Fox News interviewed the sponsor of the anti-Semitic ads, Ed Mast – and no one else. I think that it is reprehensible that Fox News would interview a notorious Jew-hater for the report but never contacted us for substantiation or comment. It let the lies stand unchallenged. I’d expect that from MSNBC or CNN, but now we see that Fox News is little (if any) better.

ABC News Seattle, however, was even worse (as hard as that may be to believe). Its “reporter,” Matt Markovich, got everything wrong. Everything. They got our name wrong, calling us the “American Federation Defense Initiative” and identifying us as an “East Coast Jewish activist organization.” In reality, we are a human rights group dedicated to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and individual rights. Matt Markovich says at the tail end of this piece that he tried to contact us. Everyone else managed to find us. Are ABC reporters new to this? Clearly, Matt wasn’t trying terribly hard. The gist of Markovich’s story (and that’s what it is, a fiction) is that our ad ran while the vicious anti-Jewish group SEAMAC’s did not. This is just plain wrong. Our ad is a response to their ad currently running. Nuts, right?

The knee-jerk outrage in the face of the truth is comical. The Seattle transit authorities were extremely reluctant to run my ad. I had to provide numerous sources showing that the Palestinians had indeed called for a Jew-free state. Abbas has called for it, as has Fayyad. Of course, Ed Mast was never made to provide any documentation for the claims in his Jew-hating ad. As for the Jew-hater Mast’s bogus contention that our ads are misleading, that is complete projection. The fact is that religious minorities do not have equal rights under Islamic law, and Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

The Seattle Times article was just as one-sided. Reporter Keith Ervin asked for the documentation as well, but then didn’t use any of it in his article. He quoted Mast calling my organization a “hate group” but didn’t print my response: “This is a familiar libel that leftists and Islamic supremacists resort to in order to discredit their opponents and turn people of good will away from their message. Our organization is dedicated to the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience and equality of rights of all people under the law. They smear us as ‘hateful’ because they cannot refute what we say.”

The smear coverage makes it clear how true my words really are. But the ads are up. We are striking a blow for truth in Seattle.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013