FrontPage Magazine Interview: Pamela Geller

FrontPage Magazine Interview: Pamela Geller

"Unprecedented Sharia Enforcement by City Governments" August 21, 2012

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Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, the founder, editor, and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com. She is the executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), and is a regular columnist for World Net Daily, the American Thinker, and other publications. She is the author of Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.

FP: Pamela Geller, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Geller: Thank you, Jamie.

FP: I would like to talk about your new ad campaign and all the controversy it is causing. Tell us what is going on.

Geller: Jamie, two counter-jihad ads that my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), began running last week in New York and San Francisco are causing quite a stir – not among the public, but among the mainstream media and craven politicians. Dhimmi public officials and the media are falling all over themselves in furious efforts to enforce the restrictions on free speech that the Sharia prescribes.

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FP: What do the ads say?

Geller: In New York, the ads are running in Metro-North stations just north of New York City, as well as in the Bronx. They say, “*19,250 deadly Islamic attacks since 9/11/01. *And counting. It’s not Islamophobia, it’s Islamorealism.” In San Francisco, our ads say, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”

FP: And what has been the reaction?

Geller: Greenburgh, New York Town Supervisor Paul Feiner announced that he wanted Metro-North to warn passengers that the ads could be upsetting and don’t represent Metro-North’s views or that of the community. Feiner said, “[Muslims] should not be discriminated against. The posters encourage hatred, discrimination and do not help the efforts to fight hate crimes.”

Feiner implies that all Muslims support jihad. Sounds as if he is painting all Muslims with the same brush. How “Islamophobic.” It is “Islamophobic” and a real attempt to paint all Muslims as jihadists to suggest that all Muslims would oppose attempts to rein in the jihadists. Our ads are statements of fact. There have been, as of this writing, over 19,460 deadly Islamic attacks since 911. How is it “Islamophobic” to point that out?

And Peter Swiderski, the mayor of Hastings-on-Hudson, emailed me about the ads, saying: “I wanted to share with you what our Board of Trustees sent to the entire village tonight.”

FP: What did he want to “share”?

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Geller: He wanted to “share” the letter that the village Board sent out.

FP: What did the letter say?

Geller: They wrote: “While the Board respects everyone’s right to free speech, we categorically condemn the bigotry and innuendo expressed by this billboard message. To tar a faith and its followers because of the actions of a few is deplorable, hateful and morally repugnant.”

FP: Right, and nothing in your ad condemns Islam and all Muslims because of jihad attacks.

Geller: That’s right, Jamie. The Board is reading the idea that “all Muslims” support jihad terror attacks into my ad. That is nowhere in my message. They are the Islamophobes and racists, not I. Do these politicians really believe that all Muslims support jihad? And if they believe it, why surrender so swiftly?

FP: Good point. What else did the letter say?

Geller: The Board also asked residents of Hastings-on-Hudson to write to the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) expressing their “dismay” that our ads were not deemed “hate speech.” Yet the Mayor and this Board of spineless wonders maintained their neutrality about the anti-Semitic ads that the MTA previously ran; they were silent about them. Notice how these clowns at one government entity have “complained” to another about private citizens exercising their constitutional rights.

FP: Did you respond to Swiderski?

Geller: Yes. I wrote to him, asking “why no such mailing went out concerning the vicious anti-Semitic ads. The anti-Israel ads were twice the buy (100 kiosks.)  This speaks to a systemic, institutionalized anti-Semitism prevalent in your administration and among the Board. Care to comment?” Why didn’t he react as viscerally when the same kiosks had vicious blood libels posted about Israel? He is apparently OK with anti-Jewish ads. His bias is showing.

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