Over at Atlas Shrugs I discuss one example of the hateful mainstream media demonization of Pamela Geller’s pro-Israel ad campaign:
It
is good, and rather surprising in today’s climate, to see the San
Francisco Examiner, in an unsigned editorial, come out for Pamela Geller’s
free speech rights and say that her pro-Israel ads should be allowed to run.
However, the Examiner predictably enough retails Islamic supremacist talking
points in branding the ad “offensive,” “bigoted,”
“hateful” and even “repulsive.” Even the title of the
editorial itself shows how unhappy and even embarrassed the Examiner’s
editorial writer is to have to be coming out in favor of these ads running: “Hateful
bus ads are free speech.”The
ad in question says: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage,
support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.” The Examiner notes
that “the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an organization so extreme it
has been deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, purchased the
ads.” It is no surprise that the Examiner doesn’t bother to tell its luckless readers
that the SPLC is a Leftist organization devoted to demonizing conservative
individuals and groups by branding them as “hate groups” and lumping them in
with the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. It doesn’t specify, of course, what it
thinks is hateful about AFDI”s dedication to the defense of the freedom of speech,
the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights of all people before the law.The
Examiner also doesn’t bother to explain why it thinks the ad is ad
“offensive,” “bigoted,” “hateful” and even
“repulsive,” but objections to the ad have revolved around two
related claims: that it calls everyone who sides with the
“Palestinians” against Israel, or every Muslim or every Arab, a
“savage,” and that the people who are opposed to Israel are not
savages. The ad doesn’t actually refer to all supporters of the Palestinian
jihad, or all Muslims or all Arabs, but that claim has nevertheless been widely
repeated in the mainstream media. It actually refers to the Palestinian jihadis
who glory in the murders of innocent civilians.Take,
for example, Ahlam Tamimi, who helped murder 16 Israelis in a pizzeria. She
recently appeared on al-Aqsa TV and recounted
the joy of the “Palestinians” as radio reports on the jihad
attack increased the number of dead: “Two minutes later, they said on the
radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I
just couldn’t. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept
increasing, the passengers were applauding.”Is
it savage to take pleasure in the mass murder of innocent civilians? Yes, it
is. And it is not actually “hateful,” or “bigoted,” or
“offensive” or “repulsive” to say so. Glorying in the
murders of innocent human beings is hateful, offensive, and repulsive, and
stems in this case from Islamic bigotry and Jew-hatred. But the Examiner
wouldn’t dream of upsetting liberal pieties by noting that.