Islamophobia American Style

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Islamophobia American Style

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 19, 2015 4:32 pm

Islamophobic Hitler ads appear on San Francisco buses
Published time: January 15, 2015 10:16
Edited time: January 17, 2015 08:47 Get short URL


An anti-Islamic, pro-Israeli lobby group has stirred controversy in San Francisco with a series of provocative ads on 50 buses, with images of Adolf Hitler accompanied by a demand to stop all aid to Islamic countries and an appeal to “stop the hate.”

The ads are the latest effort by the pro-Israel, Houston-based American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment across the US. The group is well-known for its previous Islamophobic advertising campaigns in major US cities.

READ MORE: Journalist arrested for defacing anti-Muslim ad in NYC subway

The ads appeared in the wake of the recent terrorist atrocities in France, where attacks on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket killed 17 people, including two police officers.

“Islamic Jew hatred,” the ads read. “It's in the Quran.”

The ads on buses operated by Muni, San Francisco’s municipal transportation agency, feature an archive photograph of Hitler talking with a Muslim leader from Palestine in the first half of the 20th century, Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini, who was a prominent Palestinian Arab nationalist and critic of Zionism.


SFGate.com, the website of the San Francisco Chronicle, described the ads as equating Islam with Nazism.

Pamela Geller, founder of the AFDI, told Reuters she had been working on the San Francisco ads since last spring.

“It's the only way to leapfrog over the media,” she was reported as saying. “It's the only way to talk directly to the American people.”

Pamela Geller, founder of the AFDI (AFP Photo/ Jason Andrew)Pamela Geller, founder of the AFDI (AFP Photo/ Jason Andrew)
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AFDI’s previous controversial campaigns in New York, Washington DC and San Francisco sparked outrage from both politicians and civil rights activists.

A 2012 AFDI ad campaign proclaimed: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”
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(Image from freedomdefense.typepad.com)(Image from freedomdefense.typepad.com)

In March 2013, the group ran ads bearing a picture of Osama Bin Laden, calling for people to oppose jihadists.

READ MORE: San Francisco runs controversial anti-Muslim bus ads, sparking harsh criticism


San Francisco authorities have criticized the ads, but have not sought to ban them, citing freedom of speech rights.

“We understand and apologize that people could be offended by these ads,” Paul Rose, a spokesman for Muni, said Tuesday. “Neither the city nor Muni endorse the content of these negative ads. However, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, including speech that is considered offensive,” SFGate reported Rose as saying.

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“Refusing placement would almost certainly result in a lawsuit that forces the city to run the ads under court order, and we believe taxpayer dollars should be used to improve transit and the overall transportation network – not on lawsuits,” Rose said.

Last year, the AFDI sued New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority to get similar anti-Islamic ads running.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has categorized the American Freedom Defense Initiative as a hate group.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has accused AFDI of provoking public outrage intentionally to raise money, and has previously run rival ads confronting the AFDI’s Islamophobic posters. This time, it declined to do so.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for CAIR, commented on AFDI’s Geller, saying: “We’re not going to chase her from city to city trying to undo the hatred she promotes,” he said. “We’d be doing little else. She seems to have an unending capacity for the promotion of hatred.”

The majority of people who encounter such posters will see the ads as “hate and intolerance and fear-mongering,” Hooper said.

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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 20, 2015 10:55 am

In Leaked Conversations, Director Of Rutgers Hillel Engages in Shocking Islamophobia
Andrew Getraer retweeted a series of hateful messages defaming Muslims and Palestinians.
By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet January 19, 2015

A growing movement of young Jewish American college students have formed what they call “Open Hillel,” an activist campaign to get the Jewish Hillel organization to stop freezing out critics of Israeli foreign policy.

One reason this movement has grown is because much of the younger Jewish community does not agree with the right-wing views traditionally espoused by Hillel. For example, Rutgers Hillel notoriously allied itself with extremist Pamela Gellar, who runs the anti-Muslim hate site Atlas Shrugs, when its president invited her to speak at its campus.

Rutgers Hillel director Andrew Getraer is very vocal on social media about his views, not only on Jewish faith topics but also his support for the Israeli government. Although as a matter of principle, retweets are not endorsements, Getraer in recent months retweeted a series of hateful messages defaming Muslims and Palestinians. Here are a few examples:

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Click to enlarge.
Recently, a Twitter user, Ido Shapiro (@IdoAmChai) began tweeting with Getraer about various Middle East topics but also the Palestinian issue and Muslims in general. The user running the account agreed to share their tweets and Direct Messages with AlterNet. The results were shocking.

The two started to converse in December. Shapiro began openly defaming Muslims, and Getraer engaged in the public conversations. Getraer warned about the threat of Muslim terrorists, though he did not associate all Muslims with terror:

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In private conversations via DM, the conversation eventually unearthed Getraer's more personal views. Shapiro broached the topic of Open Hillel and J Street, the centrist anti-occupation lobby:
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Getraer seemed to take issue with the idea that J Street advocates for ending the occupation of the Palestinian territories (which he calls the disputed territories) and equates evacuating settlers with removing any Jewish presence there:

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He also comes out to the right of the Israeli government and the Israeli lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Commitee (AIPAC), which claim the settlements will be removed eventually:

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Shapiro asks him if he supports a one-state solution that involves the Palestinians simply leaving and going to Jordan. Getraer says he'd agree to that but the Palestinians won't because they won't agree to anything, and agrees to the idea Palestinians didn't even exist before 1967:
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As the conversation goes along, Getraer takes aim at Islam, saying he's thankful to be a Jew because 25% of Muslims follow Islam closely enough to want to kill infidels and Jews:
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He then turns to Muslim students at Rutgers, who he claims are cheering on the murders of Jews:

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Getraer's comments stand in marked contrast to what Hillel International promotes itself to be. Its website's Israel policy says Hillel believes in Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized borders as a member of the family of nations.” It is this very policy that Hillel has cited to disallow certain critics of Israel who may advocate for a one-state solution where Palestinians and Israelis live together in one country. These comments by Getraer indicate he is indeed in favor of a one-state solution – just one where Jewish Israelis control all the land between the river and the sea and the Palestinians simply leave what's left of their homes to live in Jordan.

Getraer is also going further in violation of Hillel's historic legacy by engaging in Islamophobia, suggesting that true Islam means murdering non-beleivers and that 375 million Muslims, including numerous Muslim students at Rutgers, believe in this ideology. Hillel chapters nationwide have worked alongside Muslim faith organizations to promote interfaith harmony, and the statements Getraer made to a person he believed was a friendly Israeli Twitter user are hostile, bigoted and polarizing.

It remains to be seen whether Hillel International will sanction Getraer for his comments that stand in opposition not only to the growing Open Hillel movement but to mainstream Jewish American college student tolerance.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 20, 2015 2:31 pm

NYC may yank terrorism report to appease mosque ‘spying’ critics
By Susan EdelmanJanuary 18, 2015 | 6:33am
Modal Trigger
NYC may yank terrorism report to appease mosque ‘spying’ critics
Zale Thompson, a man who heeded online calls by ISIS for jihad, attacked two NYPD officers with a hatchet in October.

In top-secret talks to settle federal lawsuits against the NYPD for monitoring mosques, the city is weighing a demand that it scrub from its Web site a report on Islamic terrorists, The Post has learned.
The groundbreaking, 92-page report, titled “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” angers critics who say it promotes “religious profiling” and discrimination against Muslims. But law-enforcement sources say removing the report now would come at the worst time — after mounting terror attacks by Islamic extremists in Paris, Boston, Sydney and Ottawa.
Here in New York, Zale Thompson, a man who heeded online calls by ISIS for jihad, attacked two NYPD officers with a hatchet in October.
“The harm is that it sends the message that the NYPD is ­going to back down on its counterterrorism effort in the name of political correctness,” said a former NYPD official. “Shame on the NYPD if they do.”
Sources familiar with the case confirmed that removal of the NYPD report is one of the major sticking points in settlement negotiations.
Modal Trigger
The report was the basis for the NYPD’s controversial “demographic unit” which specifically targeted Muslims.
Photo: AP
Also on the table are demands that the NYPD halt any ongoing surveillance in the Muslim community and that records of prior monitoring be expunged, sources said.
With what seems today like a crystal ball, the 2007 NYPD report identified an “emerging threat” — al Qaeda-inspired jihadists in the United States and abroad, hell-bent on attacking their host countries.
“Radicalization is something the NYPD saw happening in Europe,” said the former NYPD official. “It was prescient in identifying this phenomenon and predicting it would increase.”
Among the report’s warnings:
“The majority of radical individuals began as ‘unremarkable’ — they had ‘unremarkable’ jobs, had lived ‘unremarkable’ lives and had little, if any criminal history.”
Most terrorist wannabes are reasonably well-educated male Muslims between ages 18 and 35, local residents, second- or third-generation with roots in the Middle East or South Asia, and from middle-class families.
“The Internet is a driver and enabler for the process of radicalization” — providing information on extremist beliefs to practical advice on constructing weapons
Recent converts to Islam can be the most radical. “Their need to prove their religious convictions to their companions often makes them the most aggressive.”
Potential jihadists flock to mosques as their religious beliefs deepen, then withdraw from them when “the individual’s level of extremism surpasses that of the mosque.”
Once a person is radicalized, an attack can happen very quickly. “While the other phases of radicalization may take place gradually, over two to three years, this jihadization component can be a very rapid process, taking only a few months, or even weeks.”
Under former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, the report served as a blueprint for the NYPD’s “demographic unit,” which sent plainclothes detectives into Muslim cafes, stores and mosques to detect potential terrorists.
Modal Trigger
Former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly used the report as the basis for the fight against terrorism in NYC.
Photo: AP
After the initiative was exposed by The Associated Press, Muslim leaders and groups filed two lawsuits in Brooklyn federal court claiming they were subjected to unwarranted surveillance.
The suits complain the radicalization report puts virtually all Muslims under suspicion.
Last April, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton disbanded the intelligence-gathering unit.
A spokesman for the city Law Department said, “Discussions are ongoing, and nothing is final.”
Additional reporting by Laura Italiano, Julia Marsh and Amber Jamieson
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby Nordic » Wed Jan 21, 2015 12:15 am

Sheesh, but you can bet if any ads criticizing Israel in the slightest appeared on any bus in San Francisco, the city would yank those down immediately. And use "hate speech" as a justification.

This Geller woman. Yuck.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby Elvis » Wed Jan 21, 2015 1:01 am

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“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby Searcher08 » Wed Jan 21, 2015 12:34 pm

GEE THANKS, ELVIS
:)
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby Burnt Hill » Wed Jan 21, 2015 12:54 pm

Nordic » Wed Jan 21, 2015 12:15 am wrote:Sheesh, but you can bet if any ads criticizing Israel in the slightest appeared on any bus in San Francisco, the city would yank those down immediately. And use "hate speech" as a justification.

This Geller woman. Yuck.


Right. And they could also make it a policy not to carry any political ads at all, problem solved.
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 11, 2015 11:16 am

3 Muslim Students Murdered in North Carolina
9:15 AM ET

Chapel Hill police officers investigate the scene of three murders near Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill, N.C., Feb. 10, 2015.
Police don't point to a motive

Police charged a North Carolina man Wednesday with the murder of three Muslim students, but any motive for the shooting wasn’t immediately clear.

The shooting occurred about 5 p.m. on Tuesday, when police responded to gunfire and found the three victims dead in their apartment in Chapel Hill. All three were shot in the head, WRAL reports. The suspect Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, described himself online as an “anti-theist,” according to a local ABC affiliate. Police said he turned himself in and has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

The victims were identified as Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, and his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and Abu-Salha’s sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh, the Charlotte Observer reports.

Barakat was a second-year dental student at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Dentistry. He was an advocate for global dental health and planned to travel to Turkey this summer to treat Syrian refugee students for urgent dental needs and distribute toothbrushes and toothpaste.


His wife Abu-Salha was scheduled to graduate in December with a degree in biological sciences. She and Barakat were married late last year. Her Facebook page shows her dancing with her father at her wedding. Abu-Salha’s sister, Razan, was studying architecture.

The crime ignited anger on social media over what some believe was a targeted killing, with people using the Twitter hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter. But police haven’t pointed to a motive.

The Council on American Islamic Relations urged authorities to investigate a possible anti-Muslim motive, the Washington Post reports.

“Based on the brutal nature of this crime [and] the past anti-religion statements of the alleged perpetrator,” said CAIR’s National Executive Director Nihad Awad, “we urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to quickly address speculation of a possible bias motive in this case.”
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 22, 2015 9:26 am

US judge allows 'Muslims killing Jews' ads on buses
By Staff Writers, Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera
Wednesday, Apr 22, 2015

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Similar AFDI advertising campaigns have run in other US cities, including in Washington DC [File: AFP]

A United States federal judge has ordered New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to display on its buses a controversial ad that refers to Muslims killing Jews, rejecting the argument that the ad could incite "terrorism" or imminent violence.

In his ruling, published on Tuesday, US District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan said the ad from the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which had previously run in Chicago and San Francisco, was protected speech under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Similar AFDI campaigns have also run elsewhere, including in Washington DC.

The ad portrays a menacing man wearing a scarf around his head and face, includes a quotation "Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah" attributed to "Hamas MTV", and then states, "That's His Jihad. What's yours?"

Koeltl said he was "sensitive" to security concerns, but noted that the MTA and Chairman Thomas Prendergast "underestimate the tolerant quality of New Yorkers and overestimate the potential impact of these fleeting advertisements. It strains credulity to believe that New Yorkers would be incited to violence by ads that did not incite residents of Chicago and San Francisco".

MTA buses and subways are often forums for policy debates. The agency has accepted other ads from the AFDI, which is characterised as an anti-Muslim group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said the agency is disappointed in the ruling and is reviewing its options.

The judge suspended the effect of his order for a month to leave time for appeals.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby AlicetheKurious » Wed Apr 22, 2015 10:25 am

I wouldn't get on a bus that had an ad like this on it. If possible, I'd walk to work instead, carrying a sign rejecting this garbage. I wonder what can be done.
"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby AlicetheKurious » Thu Apr 23, 2015 3:08 am

“Refusing placement would almost certainly result in a lawsuit that forces the city to run the ads under court order, and we believe taxpayer dollars should be used to improve transit and the overall transportation network – not on lawsuits,” Rose said.


But some of those taxpayers are Muslims, and/or people with a functioning brain and conscience, who have a right to public transportation that doesn't have Nazi posters on it.

Think what would happen if a group bought similar ads, and got them onto the public transport system, but they said, "Jewish hatred of Christians: It's in the Talmud", and posted a photo of Ovadiah Yosef.

This is not a rhetorical question. I think it's really important to think about it, and to understand what that double-standard actually means: that one category of people enforces "rights" only for its own group, which they themselves deny to others. And gets away with that. What does that say about that group's power in relation to other groups? If it's illegal to incite against people by defaming or maligning their religion, then it's illegal regardless of the religion.

But if it's legal to incite against some people by defaming or maligning their religion, but illegal only when it comes one particular religion, then the latter is privileged above all others. Some Jewish advocates actually don't deny that; on the contrary, they argue that this is the way it should be, because Jews are a special case: Jews are the most victimized people in history, regardless of time or place. They are victims of persecution by definition, regardless of the facts. It's a mystical thing. Almost a religious belief in itself, because it's an article of faith, not to be questioned.

So the "victim" label in this case doesn't apply to people who are subjected to soul-grinding discrimination on the basis of their religion. It doesn't mean being denied equal job opportunities, or freedom of movement, or being targeted for harassment or violence by police or other officials. It doesn't mean being humiliated by stereotypes and ignorant statements, and being hated by those who know nothing about you or your faith, other than the false claims propagated by those who are intent on destroying you, and who have the financial and other resources to get their message out. It doesn't mean being denied basic legal rights, like the right to privacy or the right to be presumed innocent by authorities, or any of the other rights that are supposed to apply to all.

No. the "victim" label in this case is a badge of privilege, a weapon wielded by the powerful against the weak, to persecute and isolate and silence them, all in the name of fighting against "hatred". It's a brazen reversal of meaning worthy of Orwell himself, or Goebbels.
"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 23, 2015 11:33 am

Anti-Islam Hate in City of Brotherly Love
April 16, 2015

Though the First Amendment protected the right of American Nazis to march through Jewish neighborhoods of Skokie, Illinois, in 1978, the provocation was universally condemned. Now, an Islamophobic group is posting Muslim-bashing ads on Philadelphia buses, notes Lawrence Davidson.

By Lawrence Davidson

On April 1, an anti-Muslim advertisement started appearing on 84 municipal buses in the Philadelphia regional area. The ad space was purchased for a four-week period by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which paid $30,000 to run its message: a picture from the early 1940s of Adolf Hitler speaking to Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti (chief Muslim religious authority) of Jerusalem, with an accompanying text, “Islamic Jew Hatred: It’s in the Quran” and a call to “end all aid to Islamic countries.”

Philadelphia is just the latest city to experience this sort of offensive Islamophobia. Indeed, running Islamophobic attack ads on transit systems across the nation seems to be AFDI’s specialty.

The AFDI is part of an extremist organization called Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), which is led by the hyperactive Islamophobe and strident rightwing Zionist Pamela Geller. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has long tracked right-wing extremist organizations, has labeled the SOIA a “hate group.”

Philadelphia’s regional transit authority (SEPTA) tried to refuse the advertisement because it so blatantly did what it incorrectly alleged the Quran does – promote hatred. But the AFDI took SEPTA to court and won with a freedom of speech argument.

Analyzing the AFDI Advertisement

The ad now appearing in the Philadelphia area is actually a piece of propaganda. There is no accurate context given for the photo it displays, and the reference to the Quran lacks a citation. So let’s fill in what is missing with some analysis.

-The Photograph of the Grand Mufti Speaking to Hitler: Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974) was a member of a leading family in Jerusalem. Early in the British occupation of Palestine he was appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, making him one of the most influential Muslim leaders in the colony.

The British assumed they could control Husseini, who was only 26 years old at the time, and hoped that his appointment would placate Arab nationalist feelings. However, they had seriously underestimated him. Husseini’s goal was to achieve independence for Arab Palestine, and that made him a staunch opponent of the Zionist colonial project.

When a major anti-colonial Arab revolt broke out in 1936, the British mistakenly believed that Husseini was one of its major organizers and sought to arrest him. If they had managed to do so he probably would have been deported to one of Britain’s African colonies. To avoid this fate, Husseini fled to Iraq, which at this time was also a British colony in open revolt. When the British suppressed the Iraqi rebellion, Husseini fled to Fascist Italy from where he was eventually moved to Germany.

The advertisement that now appears on Philadelphia area buses shows Husseini speaking with Adolf Hitler. The implication, which is false, is that Palestine’s Muslim religious leader was himself a Nazi. If one does the research, one can find other pictures and documents that show Husseini recruiting Muslim soldiers in the Balkans to fight in the German army. He also did propaganda broadcasts in Arabic for the Germans urging resistance to British imperialism.

Thus, it cannot be denied that he collaborated with Nazi Germany during the war years. However, none of this activity was undertaken because he was a Nazi. It was done because he was opposed to British imperial rule in Palestine and other Arab territories. If the British had been at war with Sweden instead of Germany, Husseini would have sought refuge among the Swedes and broadcast propaganda for them.

The same can be said for Husseini’s attitude toward a Jewish Palestine. He was adamantly against it. When he proclaimed, as part of his pro-German propaganda, that he wished to see Jews driven from the Arab lands, the most logical interpretation of this statement is that it was Zionist Jews he sought expelled, for in other statements to German leaders of the time he said the best solution for Palestine was for the Jews to go back to their countries of origin.

Thus, Husseini’s statement seems to have no relevance for Palestine’s indigenous Sephardic Jews. There is no convincing evidence that he supported the Holocaust (though he was aware of it) despite an on-going Zionist effort to make it appear that he did.

Whatever one might think of the Mufti’s activities in wartime Germany, he was driven to them not by any belief in Nazi doctrines, but by the ongoing oppression of his native land by British policies in support of Zionist ambitions. Much like the British and American wartime alliance with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union or, for that matter, the U.S. alliance with Osama bin Laden and the Mujahedin in Afghanistan, Husseini’s alliance with Hitler’s Germany was a function of the enemy of my enemy is, at least for the moment, my friend.

– “Jew Hatred” and the Quran: The AFDI bus ad goes on to declare that “Jew Hatred” can be found in the Quran. It is hard to take such a charge seriously, because the Quran, like the Old and New Testaments, is a book of scripture in which one can find, and then misinterpret, almost anything one wants.

Thus, through selective and out-of-context quoting, or by simple innuendo, one can make outrageous accusations. Of course, the present bus ad forgoes quotation or citation and just makes an unsupported declaration.

One has to keep in mind that the Quran is approximately 1,500 years old, and so framing the attitude of all modern Muslims in terms of a few statements critical of early Seventh-Century Jews (while ignoring statements that are positive) is like saying that all educated English people dislike Jews because they revere the same Shakespeare who, in the late Sixteenth Century, wrote the Merchant of Venice.

Actually, if you compare the Quran and the Old Testament on the violent treatment of “the other,” the Old Testament is much worse. It is a very bloody affair (for instance, see book 1 of Samuel), featuring a wrathful deity who arranges cruel fates for any group that gets in the way of ancient Hebrews.

My personal opinion is that such a God deserves to be avoided rather than worshipped. On the other hand, the Quran’s portrayal of hell is pretty awful, but then its pains and tortures are attributed to that same wrathful deity found in the Old Testament.

Just to be even-handed on this topic, the New Testament’s Book of Revelation seems to inspire many Christian fundamentalists to earnestly yearn for global annihilation.

-Stop the Aid!: Finally, the ad calls for a halt to aid going to Islamic countries. Actually, this might not be a bad idea, considering that a lot of this aid is made up of loan guarantees to dictatorships for the purchase of U.S. weapons. If we could balance this out by halting the yearly $3 billion-plus in aid to Israel, we would have a win-win situation. However, on both counts the U.S. munitions manufactures would scream bloody murder (pun intended) because they are the ones profiting from such “aid.”

When a bigoted extremist like Pamela Geller places misleading and hate-promoting propaganda on buses, the Zionist establishment has nothing critical to say. They treat it as if it is all very proper and upheld by “free speech.”

However, when supporters of the Palestinian cause put up billboards picturing a series of maps that show the absorption of Arab Palestine by Zionist settlers between1948 and today, pious rabbis and Zionist lobbyists protest and call it “anti-Semitic.” Hypocrisy is the name of the game.

This is all about the ongoing battle to control the message: that is the history and reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the early 1970s, when I started supporting the Palestinian cause, the Zionists had a near monopoly on that message. There were almost no venues that would allow someone who was pro-Palestinian to speak or publish, and on the rare occasion that one found a platform, one was subjected to heckling and threats.

The situation has really changed. At least outside of the Washington Beltway, those who support Palestinian rights are on the offensive, and the Zionists on the defensive. However, the Zionists certainly have not given up, and the most egregious of them, such as those at the AFDI, still lash out with hate-filled messages. So, the fight goes on.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 04, 2015 9:48 am

Pamela Geller, the incendiary organizer of Texas ‘prophet Muhammad cartoon contest’

By Lindsey Bever May 4 at 7:21 AM

Political blogger Pamela Geller, American Freedom Defense Initiative’s Houston-based founder, speaks at the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest, which is sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, in Garland, Texas May 3, 2015. Two gunmen opened fire on Sunday at the art exhibit in Garland, Texas, that was organized by an anti-Islamic group and featured caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad and were themselves shot dead at the scene by police officers, city officials and police said. (Mike Stone/Reuters)
For those unfamiliar with Pamela Geller, she was in the news a few weeks ago for sponsoring an ad campaign across major U.S. cities with anti-Muslim posters saying, among other things, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah.”

On Sunday, she was in the news again for sponsoring a “Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” in Garland, Tex., some 20 miles from Dallas, after which two suspects opened fire on a security guard before being shot and killed by police. Authorities did not immediately link the exhibit and the shootings, but Geller did, with vehemence.

But Geller drew national attention long before now. In 2009, she became a leader of the movement against a mosque in Manhattan. She told the New York Times she believed the only “moderate Muslim is a secular Muslim” and that when Muslims “pray five times a day … they’re cursing Christians and Jews five times a day.”

[Gunmen shot dead in Texas after opening fire outside prophet Muhammad cartoon show]

The wealthy housewife-turned-blogger has become one of America’s loudest voices against what she sees as the creeping “Islamization” of America. She is president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative as well as Stop Islamization of America.

Gunmen dead after attack at cartoon contest(1:25)
Two gunmen in Garland, Tex., attacked a contest for cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad on Sunday. Garland police officers returned fire and killed both gunmen. (AP)
Islamization, she has said, is not something that will happen overnight. “It’s a drip, drip, drip, drip,” she told the New York Times in 2010 as she waged war against the so-called ground zero mosque. “The mosque-ing of the workplace where you’re imposing prayer times on union contracts, non-Muslim workers have to lengthen their day. … These demands are a way of imposing Islam on a secular society.”

Such wild rhetoric prompted the Southern Poverty Law Center to add her group to its list of “hate groups,” calling her the “anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead.” ” She’s relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam and makes preposterous claims,” it said.

“They say I’m a racist, Islamophobic, anti-Muslim bigot,” Geller told the Village Voice in 2012.”I’m anti-jihad. … I don’t see how anyone could say I’m anti-Muslim. I love Muslims.”

Geller portrays herself as emerging straight from Ground Zero.


When terror struck, she has said, it did something to her. She started a blog. She posed in a bikini to rant about Islam. She advanced conspiracy theories about President Obama — he was the “love child” of Malcolm X, he was once involved with a “crack whore” and, as a child, he was a Muslim and he never renounced Islam.

But as the mosque controversy receded in memory, so did Pamela Geller. Then in January came the assault by Muslim gunmen on Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical newspaper, which claimed a dozen lives. Geller was back in the public eye.

In response, she decided to organize Sunday’s “Muhammad Art Exhibit & Contest,” which would award a $10,000 prize to the “winning cartoon” depicting the prophet Muhammad.

“We decided to have a cartoon contest to show we would not kowtow to violent intimidation and allow the freedom of speech to be overwhelmed by thugs and bullies,” she told The Washington Post in an e-mail.

Many in Garland objected to the event. Some, including Muslims, said it was blasphemous. Others cited “public safety” concerns. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, however, decided to play it down. “We are not paying any attention to this at all,” Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR spokesman, told the Dallas Morning News. “The thing [Geller] hates most is being ignored.”

But Geller knew what she was getting into and would not be ignored.

“I expected that people would come to realize how severely the freedom of speech is threatened today, and how much it needs to be defended,” she told The Post. “We were prepared for violence.” Indeed, her group’s Web site said “we know the risks” and that the “exhibit has to be staged.”

“If we don’t show the jihadists that they will not frighten us into silence,” the site said, “the jihad against freedom will only grow more virulent.”

As Sunday’s show was coming to an end, two gunmen rolled up in a car and shot an unarmed security guard, police said. Two local police officers fired back. The incident left both gunmen dead, their bodies lying in the street for hours. The security officer was transported to a local hospital, treated and later released.


Although police said throughout the night that they did not know whether the shooting was related to cartoon contest, Geller immediately announced that it was, calling it part of the “war on free speech.”

“The Islamic jihadis are determined to suppress our freedom of speech violently,” she told The Post.

“They struck in Paris and Copenhagen recently, and now in Texas. This incident shows how much needed our event really was. The freedom of speech is under violent assault here in our nation. The question now before is — will we stand and defend it, or bow to violence, thuggery, and savagery?”

For Geller, it was her own Charlie Hebdo moment.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby Lord Balto » Mon May 04, 2015 2:44 pm

I think we should have a Draw Pamela Geller as a Death Dwarf cartoon contest.

Other than propping up both the Israeli and American arms industries, what good does this nonsense do for anyone? If this is about abstract freedom of speech, where are the cartoons of Netanwahoo diddling Palestinian boys? Or Geller having sex with an elephant? Why do some folks have a compulsion to do what someone tells them not to do? They act like out-of-control children and the media doesn't call them on it.
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Re: Islamophobia American Style

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed May 06, 2015 8:56 pm

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
In that spirit, the Rude Pundit has an idea:

Here's what the Rude Pundit would have drawn in an attempt to win that prize and use his God-given right to free speech: Muhammad fucking Pamela Geller in the ass on a bed made of the Israeli, ISIS, and American flags. Muhammad would have had the most stereotyped vicious A-Rab face you've ever seen, bearded, big-nosed, brownish, brow furrowed, concentrating hard on savagely pumping Geller's asshole between her lily-white ass cheeks. And Geller wouldn't have been in pain or crying or anything that would denote that she is being raped. Oh, no. She'd be depicted with a dollar sign-shaped dildo peeking out of her pussy and her collagen-injected lips parted in pleasure and nearing orgasm, loving the reaming that Muhammad is giving her, with a word bubble coming out of her mouth as she's panting, saying, as the most fundamentalist of Muslims would, "Without you I'm nothing, without you I'm nothing."


Here's another bit that made me laugh: Geller thinks Obama's father is Malcolm X. If only. Guess the apple fell far from the tree.

5 Reasons Why Even Charlie Hebdo Wants Nothing to Do With Islamaphobe Pamela Geller

Geller is no freedom fighter, as she claims. She's a hater, pure and simple.

By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet
May 6, 2015

Following the Garland shooting last week, anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller has been in the media portraying herself as an advocate of free speech and tolerance. But even the French satirical magazine Charlie Hedbo, which has long pushed the limits of speech with its crude satirical drawings mocking Muhammed, among other topics, is distancing itself, saying that she is “obsessed with Islam.”

Here are five reasons why Geller isn't just another free speech activist ,and why even biting political satirists want nothing to do with her:

1. She Wants To Ban All Muslim Immigration: Geller's organization the American Freedom Defense Initiative has published a platform that, among other things, “calls for an immediate halt of immigration by Muslims into nations that do not currently have a Muslim majority population.”

2. She Rationalized Norwegian Terrorist Anders Breivik's Violence: After Norway's terror attack, it was discovered that the attacker was a fan of Geller's work. She herself sought to rationalize his violence, posting a picture of a youth camp in Norway and writing that “the faces...are more MIddle [sic] Eastern or mixed that pure Norwegian” – recall that Breivik's greatest grievance was that his country was letting in too many Muslim immigrants.

3. She Said Building A Mosque In New York City Was Like Another 9/11 Attack: “The Ground Zero Mosque is the second wave of the 9/11 attack,” she provocatively claimed.

4. She Has A Bizarre Theory Of Who Obama's Parents Really Are: Geller has speculated that President Obama's true father is Malcolm X.

5. She Has Launched A Bitter Campaign To Divide American Jews And Muslims: For years, Geller has paid for bus ad campaigns claiming that Muslims are ordered by their faith to kill Jews. This year, the ads drew so much fire that New York City announced that it would be disallowing all political ads in the future.

Geller has a right to her own free, deeply offensive and divisive speech, but it should be clear that she is not really a believer in freedom for others, particularly if they are Muslim.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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