A pro-Israel group will be allowed to display an advertisement containing the phrase “Hamas Killing Jews” on New York City’s buses, a judge ruled this week.
The ruling came after a lawsuit filed against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) last year by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) , an organization headed by blogger Pamela Geller that's behind the advertisement. The MTA had notified the group that it would display only three of four proposed ads but not an ad with the quote “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah”, claiming that it could incite violence.
The ad showed a covered face next to the quote attributed to “Hamas MTV.” It is followed by the words: “That’s his jihad. What’s yours?”
Judge John Koeltl said the ad is protected speech, but added that he was sensitive to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s claim that the ad could incite violence and appreciates the efforts necessary to prevent violent attacks.
However, Koeltl noted that the same ads ran in San Francisco and Chicago in 2013 without incident. He also said that examples of violent attacks cited by the MTA show that individuals might commit heinous acts without warning.
"Under the First Amendment, the fear of such spontaneous attacks, without more, cannot override individuals' rights to freedom of expression," the judge said in his ruling.
David Yerushalmi, a lawyer for the organization, said the decision "sends a strong message both to government bureaucrats who would restrict our freedom of speech based upon what they perceive to be a global jihadist threat, and it also sends a telling message to our enemies abroad and at home: Their threats of violence will not prevent the courts from upholding the First Amendment."
MTA spokesman Adam Lisbery said the agency was ‘’disappointed’’ by the ruling.
Last year, the AFDI successfully sued the MTA in a similar case which enabled them to display 4.6-meter-long (15-foot) side of 20 buses in Washington DC.
The previous advertisement pictured Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler sitting opposite his “staunch ally” Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem who allied himself with the Third Reich before and during WWII.
In that case, a federal judge ruled that the authority had violated the group’s First Amendment rights by banning the ad.