or send your tax deductible check to AFDI Att: Pamela Geller 1040 1st Avenue #121 NY NY 10022
Look back on 2014 -- the Islamic State, beheadings, the war on Israel, sharia restrictions on free speech -- and who is out there fighting the ideology behind the bloodshed and suppression? YOU and I are. Where are your donation dollars best spent? Let's review what AFDI accomplished in the past few months in the the war of ideas.
On Friday, CNN journalist Mona Eltahawy was finally brought to justice for destroying one of our pro-Israel, defeat jihad ads. When our ads were posted on NYC subway platforms, Eltahawy spray-painted one of them and attacked AFDI/SIOA associate Pamela Hall. It took two years, but justice has finally been served.Mona tried to declare victory, tweeting: “My attorney @StanleyCohenLaw just wrote to tell me that my spray painting case has been dismissed in the interests of justice.#ProudSavage.” Not surprisingly, Eltahawy was lying: the case wasn’t dismissed outright “in the interests of justice”; rather, she has to perform community service and pay cose to $1000 restitution. The judgment is a victory for AFDI and free speech. Mona Eltahawy paid for what she did.
These "islamophobia" ads are running as we speak on 100 NYC buses.
Downtown bus
57th Street, East Side
Next week, I head to Canada to be deposed in our lawsuit against the city of Edmonton for removing our honor killing ads that were designed to help Muslim girls under threat from devout sharia-adherent familes.
As you know, AFDI is the only activist organization organizing protests and creating small groups across the country to fight Islamization in our schools and in the workplace, while running national ad campaigns, filing freedom of speech lawsuits that result in historic precedents, and editing and publishing the largest counter-jihad websites on the internet, Altas Shrugs and Jihad Watch.
Our social media footprint is huge, with well over 100,000 followers on twitter and 200,000 on Facebook. That's powerful.
Our latest ad campaigns went viral, and as expected, the coverage was hostile. "Hating jihad," went the New York Daily News headline. Are we supposed to love it? But because of the media's frenzy to discredit and defame us, millions more people see our ads.
A Daily News headline screams, "Shocking anti-Islam ad campaign coming to MTA buses, subway stations." Shocking? Shocking is beheading journalists with six-inch knives. Shocking is kidnapping hundreds of non-Muslim girls, gang-raping them and selling them at slave markets. Shocking is one million Christians being ethnically cleansed or slaughtered from Syria. Shocking is thousands of American, European, Australian, Canadian Muslims flocking to Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State.
Shocking is the media's deceitful and corrupt coverage of jihad. But our ads break through the media whitewash and deception to tell the whole truth, and get that truth out to millions.
Here are some of the ads that ran in 2014:
And how the media establishment hates it!
Imagine: in the wake of beheaded journalists, a major newspaper called my ads "anti-Islam" and me a "notorious flamethrower."
Our ads are designed to do what the media should be doing, but refuses to do: raise awareness about the nature of the jihad threat, the magnitude of that threat, and the need for Muslims in the US not just to issue vague condemnations of ISIS, but to teach young Muslims why this understanding of Islam is wrong and must be rejected. Our ads are designed to put an end to the denial and willful ignorance about that threat, so that we can adopt effective counter-terror measures based on that realistic appraisal.
For that, I'm a "notorious flamethrower," according to the guardians and shapers of American public opinion. That's why our ads are needed more than ever.
The enemy disinformation campaigners (CAIR, ISNA, Media Matters, the Center for American Progress, American Muslims for Palestine) have tens of millions of dollars to spread their lies. Over the past five years, they've spent hundreds of millions. AFDI is out there alone countering them with the truth. The whole truth that the media won't tell you and all too many "conservative" groups fear to tell you. They're afraid the media will call them "racists" and "bigots" -- so afraid they're willing to compromise with the truth.
The truth is not "racism" and "bigotry." And we're going to keep getting it out to the American people and the world, no matter what the enablers of jihad terror call us. When the liars lie, AFDI is there with the truth.
AFDI is everywhere.
This war of ideas must be fought head-on. And we must fight now, while the lies and the libels are flying thick and fast.
AFDI is fighting the war in the information battlespace on the streets, in the media, on social media and on buses and subways.
For that, WE NEED YOUR HELP. We need to get our new ad campaigns up in NYC, DC, Chicago, Miami, Houston, and Jacksonville. We need to expand our truth-telling campaigns even more widely in 2015.
SEND A CHECK TO: AFDI Attention: Pamela Geller 1040 1st Avenue #121 New York, N.Y. 10022
Here are some of the details of our ad campaigns and the ensuing media and court battles:
I. The Islamic Jew-hatred ad
We rolled out this ad all over New York City and Washington, DC:
None of these enraged media outlets was nearly as upset by the vile anti-Semitic ad to which we were responding. Our ad was a response to viciously anti-Semitic ads (bottom photo) that ran on Washington, DC buses. This was part of a systematic campaign by many different Islamic and leftist groups to dehumanize and demonize the Jewish state.
We submitted our ad to run on the same bus lines, on the same city streets, and in the same venues as the Islamic Jew-hatred ad.
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) was the sponsor of that Jew-hating ad, which evokes the ugly antisemitic stereotypes in which Jew-haters have long trafficked. The AMP is run by Dr. Hatem Bazian, a University of California-Berkeley professor who equated the Boston jihad bombings with “Islamophobia."
For years, ads like this one have run unchallenged. But this time, we were there. Their lies did not stand unchallenged.
We are still fighting to run the same ad in Philadelphia:
This week a judge ruled in our favor in our Pennslyvania lawsuit and this was today's lede story at Keystone:
U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg would not allow posted on transit vehicles and other region-wide property has been denied by a federal district judge, who says that allegedly false material remains protected by the First Amendment.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is an early victory for the plaintiffs, Pamela Geller, the president of American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), and the group’s vice president Robert Spencer. They claim that SEPTA is a government entity and has an obligation to respect their organization’s First Amendment right to free speech. Joseph Casey, general manager of SEPTA, arbitrarily rejected the advertisement because he disagreed with the message, and not because it violated their standards of use, the complaint says.
II. The Islamophobia ad
The Muslim groups that complain most loudly about "Islamophobia," such as the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), have opposed every counter-terror program that has ever been proposed or implemented. They call counter-terror measures "Islamophobic." This ad shows the reality behind that cynical propaganda ploy.
"ISLAMOPHOBIA"?
Today a different Islamic group threatened to behead another American journalist. What's it going to take to get people to address this grave threat?
More ads.
This AFDI ad campaign is designed to show the absurdity of the mainstream media focus on "Islamophobia" amid growing jihad violence worldwide. The charge of"Islamophobia" is used to intimidate people into thinking there is something wrong with opposing jihad violence.
III. The CAIR campaign
Not just the media, but corrupt political elites are desperate to silence us. The Washington D.C. City Council passed a resolution against AFDI's pro-Israel ads.
As whole swaths of the Middle East and Africa fell to Islamic supremacists, and our closest ally in the Middle East was being attacked on four fronts from Jew-hating Muslims on a jihad to annihilate the Jewish state, the Washington D.C. city council did the bidding of Hamas organizations here in the US.
Hamas-tied CAIR, meanwhile, responded to my ad campaign exposing Islamic Jew-hatred with a deceptive and dishonest propaganda campaign of its own.
CAIR's campaign featured this Qur'an verse:
"Those who have attained to faith, as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the Christians all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds shall have their reward with their Sustainer, and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve" (2:62).
What CAIR doesn't tell you, however, is that this verse only applies, according to Islamic authorities, to Jews and Christians who convert to Islam, as is confirmed by Quran 3:85: "Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the hereafter he will be one of the losers." The Jews and Christians (People of the Book) who do not become Muslims are the worst of creatures: "Verily, those who disbelieve from among the People of the Book and the idolaters, will be in the Fire of Hell, abiding therein. They are the worst of creatures" (Quran 98:6).
An early Islamic authority and cousin of Muhammad, Ibn Abbas, says this verse was abrogated by Quran 3:85: "Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the hereafter he will be one of the losers.
CAIR knows this, and is trying to deceive gullible non-Muslims.
And so we launched a NEW AFDI ad campaign: "The Truth About CAIR," on New York City trains and Washington, DC buses:
CAIR, the leading Muslim Brotherhood-tied organization in America has deceived the media, cultural and political elites in America for years, to the great peril of the American people. Despite the overwhelming evidence presented in the largest terrorist funding trial in our nation's history, the Holy Land foundation trial, the sharia-compliant media has continued to advance Hamas-CAIR's supremacist agenda, with willing help from all too many law enforcement and government officials.
CAIR's influence is vast, and growing all the time. Recently they got ABC Family to drop its projected show Alice In Arabia, solely because it contained some dramatization of the all-too-common phenomenon of child kidnapping by Muslim relatives. For years now, they have prevailed upon Hollywood to downplay or even change the identity of celluloid villains, so that Muslims are never portrayed negatively in films (thus the Muslim terrorists in the novel The Sum of All Fears became neo-Nazis in the movie).
Gentleman on the left reads the ad while making his way Third Avenue
We bought the highest traffic Metro DC stations -- the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, Capitol South, Bethesda, L'Enfant Plaza, Vienna, Shady Grove, Wells Fall Church, New Carrollton.
The ad depicts several CAIR officials who have been arrested and convicted of terror-related crimes. CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case --so named by the Justice Department during the trial of the Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation.
CAIR has a long record of duplicity and deception. Although it has received millions of dollars in donations from foreign Islamic entities, it has not registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), despite spreading Islamic supremacist propaganda within the United States.
Although it presents itself as a civil rights group, CAIR actually has numerous links to Islamic supremacist and jihad groups. CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR's executive director), were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East. CAIR has steadfastly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror.
IV. The pro-Israel marches and rallies
Also in 2014, AFDI helped organize pro-Israel marches in New York City.
Part of Hamas's war effort were death marches staged across major cities in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, etc. in support of Islamic terror against the Jewish state.
They were as much a part of the war against Israel as Hamas rockets.
Many of these hatefests were violent. Attacks on Jews became commonplace. That is why we countered with a strong message of support and love for the state of Israel.
Despite threats of violence, the huge rally we helped organize for Israel drew tens of thousands of Israel lovers. What an awesome sight. The event was under the hashtag #NYClovesIsrael -- and we tweeted it, posted it, shared it all over social media. We let Israel know she was not alone in the fight for freedom and life. And it went viral.
Because of bomb threats, we had to hire private security for the event, at tremendous expense.
We also hired private security for a counter protest against the ugly pro-Hamas hatefest at the Israel consulate. There were too many young Jewish students to risk a confrontation with these violent thugs against Israel.
Before our event, I received savage threats of carnage and violence.
Threats like this were coming in prior to our event. And this: Their threats be damned. The NYPD and the FBI were very responsive, and acted quickly and decisively to protect the rally. We also hired additional security of our own (who worked closely with law enforcement), and the event went off without a hitch. I was honored to speak before a crowd of 10,000 lovers of freedom:
WE WERE THERE.
We told the truth: Hamas is the "Palestinian" version of ISIS (and Boko Haram, Hezb'Allah, Al-Qaeda, et al).
It is the same fight, the same struggle and freedom loving peoples united to defeat it under the AFDI banner on Sunday, August 17, in New York City’s Union Square. Speakers from a huge variety of backgrounds stood for Israel and all the minority populations worldwide that are threatened by the global jihad. Speakers included Robert Spencer and me from AFDI, along with Sudanese freedom activist Simon Deng; Ashraf Ramelah, the head of Voice of the Copts; Haider Elias, a leader of the Yazidi community; Israeli scholar Mordechai Kedar, and a host of others representing the populations around the world that face the greatest threat today from Islamic jihad violence and supremacism. Staging this kind of rally is a massive undertaking. But it is critical that we wage this war in the information battlespace. All too few people realize that Israel faces the same foe that is massacring Yazidis in Iraq, Buddhists in Thailand, Christians in Nigeria, and so many others elsewhere – including 3,000 Americans on 9/11. And it is imperative that we stand together to face this threat, for united we are so much more powerful than we are when separated.
That’s why our rally was so important, and why the leftist media was (predictably) in a frenzy to discredit it. The Huffington Post headlined its hit piece “Pamela Geller, ‘Anti-Muslim Hate Group’ Leader Banned From UK, Holds Pro-Israel Rally In NY.” So opposing the oppression and genocide against the Yazidis and others is “anti-Muslim” -- and apparently the Huffington Post is on the side of the slaughterers. And pointing out that I am banned in the UK? That is a moment of shame not for me, but for Britain. Any liberal, thinking, freedom-loving human being knows how wrong it is to ban a human rights activist who stands for freedom and individual rights against oppression and subjugation.
But this is how the enemedia works: to keep the truth from being heard, they smear the truth-tellers. Smearing and sneering are all they can do. Another report was sneeringly headlined, “Pamela Geller Holds Rally in NYC Against ‘Persecuting Jihadists,’ Most NYers Can’t Bother to Be Outraged.” No “journalist” saw fit to report on the groundbreaking convergence and coalition of all the victims of jihad. None even quoted anything any of our speakers said, even to refute it.
But this media rage and contempt shows that we’re making headway: they don’t bother to try to destroy those who are not effective.
If we don’t speak out, the liars and jihad enablers of the Huffington Post and other leftist media outlets will stand unchallenged. We are unique at AFDI in our ability to challenge media lies in a way that gets the truth out and helps stem the tide against freedom.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar flew in from Israel, Sudan leader of the Freedom Movement Simon Deng, Pamela Geller
New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind
V. Fighting antisemitism in Boston
This year also, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) accepted yet another vicious antisemitic campaign to run on Boston subway platforms. This was not the first blood libel against the Jews that Boston authorities have run. This was the same antisemitic authority that refused to run our pro-Israel ads after they ran a different Jew-hating campaign. We are currently embroiled in a lawsuit against the MBTA for violating our First Amendment rights. They should also be sued for race-based Jew-hatred. They allow vicious antisemitic libels but refuse a Jewish defense ad.
These antisemitic ads make numerous false claims. They charge that there are "Jewish-only" cities in Israel; there are no such cities, but numerous Palestinian officials, including Mahmoud Abbas, have declared that no Jew will be allowed to live in a Palestinian State. These ads are a total inversion of reality. But the MBTA lets their lies stand and refused our truth.
We submitted six different Islamic Jew-hatred and Islamic apartheid ads to run on Boston buses and subways.
VI. The Pro-Israel ad and social media campaign
Wherever the media tells lies, we are there with the truth. When Hamas committed one of its numerous ceasefire violations and fired rockets into Israel, almost immediately the enemedia sprang into action, with headlines blaring:"Gaza Fighting Resumes..."AFDI was there immediately, countering these tweets and Facebook posts, retweeting the truth to counter these fallacious messages from AP and Reuters to our hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook and Twitter."Tell it straight: HAMAS BROKE CEASEFIRE":
At the same time, we rolled out a new pro-Israel campaign on 100 New York City bus tails and urban panels at Columbus Circle and 59th Street. We were everywhere with the truth -- as always.
One of these ads featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's trenchant words about Hamas and civilians:
Another of these ads highlighted Christian persecution under Islam. One million Christians have been killed or have had to flee Iraq because of persecution by jihadists. When was the last time you heard about that on the nightly news?
The other featured ads include some of our most notorious and controversial presentations -- notorious and controversial, that is, in the eyes of a compromised and corrupt media determined to pimp for jihadists and Jew-haters. They included these:
And these were the urban panels that went up on Columbus Circle and 59th Street, where they were seen by hundreds of thousands daily:
VII. The "Killing Jews is worship" ad
We are suing the NYC MTA for refusing this ad containing an authentic statement from the jihad terror group Hamas:
In front of the courthouse the day of our filing "Lawsuit Filed After 'Killing Jews' Ads Rejected," NEW YORK — Oct 1, 2014, 8:41 PM ET
"Pamela Geller-led Group Sues MTA Over ‘Killing Jews’ Ad", The Jewish Week, 10/08/14
VIII. The Edmonton lawsuit
Meanwhile, in Canada, we filed a lawsuit against the city of Edmonton, Ontario. I will going to Edmonton to be cross examined in January.
In Canada, defending girls from Islamic honor killings is "racist." Helping Muslim girls is “racist.” Edmonton Transit last year caved in to Islamic supremacist demands and took down bus ads sponsored by AFDI, offering help to Muslim girls who were living in fear of honor killing. But we are fighting back. We’ve initiated a court action to defend free speech – which is supposed to be protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
City of Edmonton sued for pulling 'honour killing' bus ad Globalnews.ca
"AFDI's Pamela Geller said that help could come in the form of access to a support system of former Muslims or Muslims who've experienced the same problems..."
The Canadian media, like the American media, certainly hates our message of hope and freedom. The media in Canada called our ads “dishonorable,” “controversial,” and, above all, “racist.”
It’s “dishonorable” and “controversial” and “racist” to save lives?
Under the Sharia, yes, it is. And so in Edmonton, Sikh Councillor Amarjeet Sohi, who should know better than to carry water for the Islamic supremacists who oppressed his people for centuries, ordered officials to take down our ads immediately. They complied – even though vicious blood libels against Israel are just fine and have run on transit systems across Canada.
IX. The trademark lawsuit
AFDI is singular in this. We confront the foes of freedom -- head on. Even when they're in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which continued to deny our trademark "Stop Islamization of America":
I said at the time:"I am not surprised by today's ruling. I expected it. This is a complete whitewash and we knew we would be up against the PC bias in the court. This is clear ongoing evidence of how the federal government and especially the courts, bend over backwards to kowtow and placate Muslim sensitivities. But why turn a blind eye? Because they are afraid of the response. Not from me, of course. The TTAB is not protecting Muslims from our 'islamophobia' and/or 'bigotry' (because there is none). No, they are afraid of the response from Islamic supremacists and that is the problem."
This case is headed to the Supreme Court and is being carefully watched by the Washington Redskins' legal team.
My tentative view is that the general exclusion of marks that disparage persons, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols should be seen as unconstitutional. ============================================================================== "Appeals Court Says ‘Islamization’ Trademark is Too Offensive," Jacob Gershman, Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2014A federal appeals court has rejected a controversial blogger’s attempt to trademark the name of a group she founded called “Stop Islamization of America,” ruling that the name is too offensive to Muslims to qualify for protection. Pamela Geller has stirred controversy across the globe with her portrayal of Islam as a religion hijacked by violent radicals bent on imposing Islamic rule over America. She’s probably most identified as a leader of protests in 2010 against the construction of a mosque near the ground zero site in New York. The case decided Tuesday was yet another dispute pitting Ms. Geller against a government agency making claims that her zealous critique of political Islam crosses the line into hate speech. The case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concerned a federal law allowing the government to refuse to register a trademark that disparages a “substantial composite” of a group. A three-judge panel ruled that her group “Stop Islamization of America” isn’t eligible for a federal trademark because it said the name suggests an association between “peaceful political Islamization” and terrorism that many Muslims would find...
X. The websites
Everyday AFDI, Atlas Shrugs, and Jihad Watch report the news that the sharia-compliant media won't cover. 24/7/365: no days off, no breaks, just constant coverage of the global jihad here and abroad, and the war on our freedoms in all its forms.
Bandwidth, IT experts, servers, webmasters costa small fortune.
Our readership numbers are through the roof now, as more and more people every day realize that they can't trust the mainstream media, and turn to us for the truth. And we must continue to inform those looking for this critical information.
We can't do that without YOU.
AFDI: Like no other group, we're standing for the truth anywhere and everywhere it is challenged. To keep standing against a corrupt establishment in 2015, we need your help. OR SEND A CHECK TO:
AFDI Attention: Pamela Geller 1040 1st Avenue #121 New York, N.Y. 10022
|