A broad-based coalition of 127 organisations – led by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Jewish Voices for Peace – DC Metro (JVP), and the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace (WIAMEP) – on October 9 sent a letter to the Washington Area Metro Transit Authority (WMATA) expressing concern over advertisements then on display in DC-area metro stations sponsored by the American Freedom Defence Initiative, a designated hate-group led by Pamela Geller.
The ads strongly suggest that Arab or Muslim opponents of Israel’s policies are “savages.” Federal Judge Rosemary Collyer, who on October 5 ruled that the ads could be placed in DC-area metro stations, called the advertisement “hate speech.” The ads were previously displayed in San Francisco and New York.
Pamela Geller is recognized as being at the core of a group promoting intolerance of Muslims and Arabs in America. The Southern Poverty Law Centre, a group that monitors the hate movement in the United States, calls her “the anti-Islam movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead.”