Sickness In Seattle

This AFP report is disgusting:

Seattle peace activists are planning to post anti-Israel ads on the sides of local commuter buses protesting US support for the Jewish state, prompting outcry from Jewish groups.
The banners show Palestinian children standing around a demolished building, with the caption “Israeli war crimes: your tax dollars at work.”
A group called the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign paid King County 1,794 dollars to plaster the ads on the sides of 12 buses starting Monday to coincide with the three-year anniversary of the start of Israel’s war with Gaza.

As always, the press is uncritical in designating leftists as “peace activists.” It doesn’t take much digging to figure out that those behind the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign are anything but. The group’s spokesman is a Seattle “playwright” named Ed Mast. In 2003, he tried to capitalize on the much-hyped death of Rachel Corrie. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoted Mast and his confederate Susan Barclay:

According to movement volunteer coordinator Ed Mast, a Seattle playwright, and Susan Barclay, another volunteer and Seattle resident who recently returned from the West Bank after being deported, the activists there mostly engage in mundane activities such as staying in Palestinians’ homes and walking with them to schools, markets or hospitals to make sure they are not harassed by Israeli army or police. …
In fact, Barclay said in an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, she knowingly worked with representatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad — terrorist groups that sponsor suicide bombings and exist, according to their charters, to demolish the Jewish state entirely. …
Mast, Barclay and others who have volunteered with solidarity group say they do not condone suicide bombings.
Mast said he didn’t support such bombings by Palestinians “in moral or strategic terms.” But he said that “whether I agree with it or not, I can understand their strategic thinking.”

So Mast is a typical left-wing “peace activist”–bizarrely obsessed with Israel, but uncritical of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Fortunately, others in Seattle are not taking the anti-Israel advertising campaign sitting down:

[A] group calling itself the American Freedom Defense Initiative [has proposed] two ads to counter the anti-Israel campaign.
“One Billion Dollars to Hamas: Your Taxpayer dollars at Work” reads one ad by the group’s Stop Islamization of America program. It shows scenes of anti-Israel and anti-US rallies organized by the Islamist movement Hamas, which rules the tiny coastal enclave of Gaza.
Another reads “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man: support Israel, defeat Islamic jihad.”
The ads feature photo montages of what appear to be Hamas militants, including children with blood-stained hands and Hitler holding the arms and shoulders of a man whose face and head are concealed by a Palestinian scarf.

Good for them. Even in Seattle, most people won’t fall for a pro-terrorist hate campaign.
UPDATE: A reader from Seattle says that the Seattle transit authority, having initially accepted the anti-Israel ads, has now decided to ban “non-commercial” advertising for the time being.

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