How can any group, let alone a county in the United States, pre­tend its own poli­cies on bus adver­tis­ing isn’t offen­sive if the mere ver­biage incites hate? This is exactly what’s hap­pen­ing in Seattle’s King County while the fringe group, Seat­tle Mideast Aware­ness Cam­paign, defends its planned ads that tout, “Israeli War Crimes.” The group’s spokesper­son, Ed Mast, claims that the ads “are meant to edu­cate peo­ple that our U.S. tax dol­lars are being mis­spent to sup­port human rights vio­la­tions overseas.”

Gee, here we go again with groups that invert and mis­use the mean­ing of those two all-important buzz­words “human rights.” I guess Mast is too short­sighted to real­ize that the hate­ful ads he’s refer­ring to are vio­lat­ing the human rights of every Jew, Israeli and pro-Israel per­son on the planet. Me and my entire fam­ily included. If we want to start talk­ing about where U.S. tax dol­lars are going then lets write the ads in lan­guage that REALLY addresses where funds are being mis­used. Shall we? How about some mega-campaigns that say:

“Gaza: a UN Sup­ported Wel­fare Enclave for Terrorists”

or

“The UN Ranks Gaza Among the Top Per-Capita Aid Recip­i­ents On the Planet”

or

“From 2000 – 2009, Gaza & the West Bank Pock­eted 3.6 Tril­lion in Aid”

Some­how, I think Mast and his peo­ple wouldn’t be too pleased about what alter­na­tive bus adver­tis­ing might look like.

Luck­ily, some sane voices have risen to the fore­front. A group I’m a founder of, Act For Israel, is per­son­ally thank­ing King County Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Peter Von Reich­bauer who has stood up for Israel and has stated that “the bus adver­tis­ing is ‘polar­iz­ing polit­i­cal state­ments,’ and are also send­ing a mes­sage of hate.” Thank you Von Reich­bauer for mak­ing moves to squash ads that con­sti­tute anti­semitism and anti-Israel pro­pa­ganda as they dele­git­imize Israel: a coun­try of 7.3 million.

Von Reichbauer’s let­ter Mon­day asked Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine to review how the county accepts adver­tis­ing for its buses. It’s our hope that the county will take imme­di­ate mea­sures and change their guide­lines to stem the tide of hate:

In one let­ter, Von Reich­bauer says, “I am a strong advo­cate of free­dom of speech and a strong believer of com­mon sense. And I believe very strongly that dan­ger­ous lan­guage can cre­ate dan­ger­ous envi­ron­ments in a soci­ety. I believe that this pro­posed bus adver­tis­ing needs to be reviewed and reevaluated.”

Act For Israel had much to say about this ad cam­paign. See our response to the planned anti-Israel bus ads HERE. Write King County and let them know that you will not stand for some­one pass­ing off anti­semitism as “edu­ca­tion” HERE.

Inter­est­ingly enough, while Metro decides whether to do the right thing and pull the anti-Israel bus ads, an Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties group is sug­gest­ing that Metro run the ads. Not run­ning the ads was even com­pared in this news arti­cle to need­ing to ban future ads from groups like Boys and Girls Club, Puget Sound Blood Cen­ter and United Way. These com­par­isons are laughable.

Time will tell what King County Metro does. Pro-Israel groups and con­cerned cit­i­zens will not let this one drop. Anti­semitism and hate speech are not edu­ca­tion. As for me and Act For Israel, we will con­tinue erad­i­cat­ing hate ads, one bus at a time.

Photo credit: KING5