StandWithUs Counters Anti-Israel Ads With Vancouver Transit Campaign
An Israel advocacy group has launched a transit campaign in opposition to anti-Israel ads on Vancouver buses and light rail stations.
StandWithUs, a right-leaning Israel advocacy group, began running two advertisements on Monday meant to combat the ads put up by the Palestine Awareness Committee.
The pro-Israel ads include one series of three maps purporting to show “Jewish Loss of Land” and are dated from 1000 BCE until “Today.” Another depicts smiling Israeli and Canadian children with the statement “Shared Values & Freedom.”
The anti-Israel ads depict “Disappearing Palestine” on a series of four maps dated 1946-2012 that illustrate “Palestine” shrinking over the years.
“The anti-Israel ads distort facts,” StandWithUs CEO Roz Rothstein said in a statement. “They presume there once was an Arab country called ‘Palestine’ when in fact no such country ever existed.”
When the Palestine Awareness Committee ads originally went up earlier in the fall, the Jewish community here threatened legal action and attempted, unsuccessfully, to have TransLink, the Vancouver transit agency, reject the ads.
While the Palestine Awareness Committee has announced plans to run its ads in other Canadian cities, Meryle Kates, executive director of StandWithUs-Canada, said StandWithUs has no plans to expand its campaign.
The StandWithUs ads will run through the middle of November. The organization has previously responded to ads it views as critical of Israel in other North American cities.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO