Pamela Geller ‘Hitler’ Anti-Islam Ad Comes to Washington D.C.
A group purporting to counter an anti-Israel ad campaign posted ads on Washington, D.C., buses featuring a photograph of Adolf Hitler meeting with Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative, led by the Islam critic Pamela Geller, launched its effort this week on about 20 Metro buses. The ads are headlined “Islamic Jew-hatred: It’s in the Koran” and call for a suspension of U.S. aid to Muslim countries.
The caption to the photo describes “Adolf Hitler and his staunch ally, the leader of the Muslim world, Haj Amin al-Husseini” in a wartime meeting. Husseini, the grand mufti of Jersualem from 1921 to 1937 before his exile by British authorities, propagandized on behalf of the Nazis and sought to recruit European Muslims to the Nazi cause but mostly failed.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative said on its website that the ads were in response to a bus ad campaign by American Muslims for Palestine that featured a grimacing Uncle Sam waving an Israeli flag and headlined “We’re sweating April 15 so Israelis don’t have to.” April 15 is Tax Day. “Stop US aid to Israel’s Occupation!” it said.
AFDI has published controversial ads in response to pro-Palestinian campaigns in other cities.
Geller led efforts to prevent the building of an Islamic center several blocks away from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack on Manhattan’s World Trade Center. She has criticized by groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and others for her harsh comments about Islam.
Husseini, who had sought an alliance with the Axis in a bid to drive Jews out of Palestine, escaped French arrest for his Nazi collaboration and slipped into obscurity until his 1974 death in Lebanon.
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
