I agree with this 100%. If you don't agree with a form of speech, then you counter that with your own form of speech. Not vandalism or violence.
The morbid reality is that a situation like this would have never been a problem for the Israelis 300 years ago. This dynamic has played out time and time again the world over. A nation with a better army drives out a nation with a lesser army and takes over its land. Three-hundred years ago the Israelis would have had absolutely no qualms about simply annihilating all Palestinian settlements and simply taking whatever they could from surrounding Arab lands. However, the modern context here is what makes the situation so intricate. Israel was created with a built-in mitigation of Palestinian integrity, the development of its army was/is aided by external forces, and now every action it takes is televised across the globe. What I find sad is that people actually feel like they can pick a side in the middle of all this, as though there's a "right" and "wrong". I think the Israelis and Palestinians BOTH have good people AND bad people, and the history goes far back before the Second World War. And I would never be naive enough to think that a situation as utterly and immovably GRAY as this could ever be seen as black and white!
That's what I don't understand about this crowd. "They won it fair and square." Alright, so you believe land can legitimately be won in war. Why should anyone stop trying then? Why should all the Arab nations not try to invade and attack? Why on earth would a Palestinian stop trying if the lesson is: you can legitimately win land in war and aggressive settlement policies? There is one variation of this type of person, the "well it used to be legitimate, but not in the modern age." Yeah right. Every loser of land comes back for revenge when circumstances permit, and every winer believes the final battle was fought fair and square. That's how humans have operated, and it obviously doesn't work.
i think this is borderline hate speech. I react to it by condemning it as disgusting and grossly ignorant, and say you need to educate yourself before you waste precious words inflaming people. America's a great place despite people like you, definitely not because of your kind.
I consider it based on hate. Either way, we have a right to free speech and unfortunately anyone can abuse that right.
Wow this is actually surprising... I see some sanity in you after all... Anyways Pamela Geller hides behind a ruse of peace but all she does is incite more hate on both sides. On one side you have people becoming offended by her crap(Muslims or Palestiniens in particular) and on the other side you have your joe sixpack who is known to blanket people into one group(gwayneco) who follows Ms. Geller and eats it all up. People like Geller who paint conflicts in black and white are the ones who continue the violence.
Brother, my issues are, and always have been, with the doctrine and not the people following the doctrine. ( unless they are radical extremists of course, of any persuasion. ) Pamela Geller and a few of her peers spew out continuous hatred upon the Muslim people in a biased and xenophobic way, that does as you say in your post 'incite more hate on both sides.' It is American Muslims like yourself that have fought in unity alongside American Christians, American Athiests (and Your Aussie SAS allies) for her freedom of speech, and right to express whatever she feels. And God bless you for it. There will always be bad seeds amongst the good, but what Pamela Geller seems to do is throw out a ton of good feed for the sake of one bad grain. (best analogy that I could come up with.) In saying that I will still stand up for what I believe, continue too debate in a civil manner doctrinal issues in any religion, and will always be against radicals of any persuasions: whether they be Islamists, zionists or cultists. Some of the so called 'anti-Islamic' websites actually have some civil debates between learned Christians and Muslims and useful information in them. Others are just spewing hatred upon anything or anyone Muslim or Islamic, it is the latter that I believe is doing a disservice to the relations between America and the American Muslim population.
This is the most surprising news in this thread. IzakDavid13's pictures would make a great counter-poster in the same subway tunnels. Put both the Israeli and Palestinian images in the ad and publicly invite ms Geller to the subway to circle the "civilized man" with pink spray paint, on camera.
The MTA can't choose on a whim. They have guidelines and these guidelines were probably considered very carefully by Ms Geller prior to getting them up there.
The MTA as a public agency likely has restrictions based on the First Amendment about what ads can get posted. It likely can only restrict ads based on obscenity standards.
The ad is (obviously) aimed at an American audience. Do you think most Americans view Palestinians as the only threat to Israel?
I think this is somewhere we went wrong with our fervor for free speech -- when a private person or a company owns a forum, they get wide discretion on what to accept or reject, even for commercial purposes, but when government owns the forum, they have very little discretion on what speech to accept or reject. I understand the logic, but there's something perverse about it as well. I would think it wise for the MTA and similar public agencies to sell/lease their ad rights to companies and cede all their power over content so that anyone who wants to put up a poster in a NYC subway has to negotiate with a business and not a city agency.
