Pamela Geller said last month that her campaign to plaster Metro stations with billboards and banners that attempt to stir up “anti-jihad” sentiment by invoking 9/11 would “go on for years.” Seems like she wasn’t lying.
Metro riders spotted more banners at the Glenmont, Petworth-Georgia Avenue and U Street-Cardozo stations featuring a Koran verse accompanied by – yet again – the indelible image of a Boeing 767 crashing into the World Trade Center.
Geller, an anti-Muslim blogger based in New York, is continuing the ad campaign waged by her organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative. The banners mounted today feature a quote seemingly targeted at non-Muslims: “Soon will we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.”
The newest banners were mounted November 5 and will remain in place through December 2, Metro spokesman Dan Stessel says. But the bottom strip of the ad features a new disclaimer: “This is a paid advertisement sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative. Advertising space is a designated public forum and does not imply WMATA’s endorsement of any views expressed.”
Stessel says the disclaimer is a new requirement for all political or advocacy advertisements mounted on the transit system, an addition that he says was not prompted by Geller’s outfit alone.
But Geller is outraged by having to include the disclaimer. “It is illustrative of the low state of the world that my ads are the issue, and not the oppression, subjugation and slaughter of non-Muslims by people who are motivated by texts such as the one in my ad,” she says.