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MTA Rejects Ads with "Killing Jews" Phrase, Agency Says

By Ben Fractenberg | September 19, 2014 10:27pm | Updated on September 22, 2014 8:45am
 The MTA rejected an ad because it used the phrase "killing Jews," the agency said on Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. 
The MTA rejected an ad because it used the phrase "killing Jews," the agency said on Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. 
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MTA

MIDTOWN — The MTA rejected a proposed transit bus advertisement for using the phrase “killing Jews,” because it incites violence, the agency said Friday afternoon. 

The ad was submitted by the American Freedom Defense Initiative — a group that fights “Islamic supremacism,” according to its website, and is run by firebrand blogger Pamela Geller — as a parody of the “My Jihad” advertisement series, which intended to counter stereotypes about Muslims.

“Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” said the proposed ad, which is attributed to “Hamas MTV.”

It shows a man wearing a traditional keffiyeh scarf covering his face, with the phrase “That’s His Jihad. What’s yours?”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations produced the My Jihad ads, which included statements like, ““My Jihad is to build friendships across the aisle. What’s yours?”

The ads ran on buses in cities including San Francisco in 2013, but not in New York.

“What we are trying to explain to our fellow Americans is that Jihad or holy struggle is a very nuanced concept,” CAIR’s San Francisco Chapter executive director Zahra Billoo told KQED public radio when the ads were introduced.

“It is a part of Islam and it includes everything from bettering oneself to bettering one’s community, to self defense.”

Geller paid for a bus ad in 2010 that juxtaposed an image of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center with a then-current rendering of the plans for the mosque and community center planned near Ground Zero.

“The MTA does not decide whether to allow or not allow a proposed advertisement based on the viewpoint that it expresses or because that viewpoint might be controversial,” the agency said in an email. 

“MTA Director of Safety and Security Raymond Diaz, a former chief of the New York City Police Department Transit Bureau, concluded the proposed advertisement would lead reasonable observers to interpret it as urging direct, violent attacks on Jews, given turmoil in Gaza, Syria and Iraq and New York City’s heightened security concerns.”

The MTA will run three other ads paid for by Geller, one of which shows a picture of journalist James Foley just before he was beheaded, the New York Daily News reported Friday.

She reportedly paid $100,000 for the advertisements, which will run on 100 MTA buses and two subway stations.

“Shocking?” Geller tweeted Friday in response to the Daily News story. “Shocking is beheading journalists.”

The MTA rejected an ad by Geller in 2011 that encouraged people to support "civilized man" and not the "the savage" and to "defeat Jihad" because the agency found it demeaning.

Geller sued and a federal judge ruled that the "no demeaning" standard violated the first amendment, according to the MTA.

The agency now requires potentially controversial ads to include a line saying they do not "imply MTA's endorsement of any views expressed."