Posted to Jewish News on

Algemeiner Director Calls Out Anti-Semitic MTA Ads

Algemeiner Journal director Dovid Efune is demanding that the MTA remove inflammatory ads depicting Israel’s alleged encroachment of Palestinian territory from Long Island train stations. He explains why the ads are anti-Semitic in an interview with CBS News.

From CBS News:

An explosive ad about Israel is now igniting a firestorm of controversy.

The display shows shrinking Palestinian territory in Israel over the years and refers to 4.7 million Palestinians there as refugees.

The ads are appearing in 50 Metro-North stations.

At the train station in White Plains, the politically-charged ad was raising eyebrows.

“That’s quite amazing if you ask me,” one man told CBS 2′s Scott Rapoport.

Some Jewish leaders said they were concerned.

“I think the ad is very offensive, it’s certainly offensive to Jews,” said Dovid Efune, the editor of the Jewish newspaper “The Algemeiner.”

Efune said the ad is anti-Semitic.

“It paints Jews as aggressors, as imperialists, as people that are stealing or taking land from others,” Efune said.

Henry Clifford, the chairman of a group called the Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine, spent $25,000 of his own money on the ads.

“The Palestinian people have lost most of their homeland and the map shows exactly what is happened to them,” Clifford said.

When asked what he hopes to get out of the ad campaign, Clifford responded by saying he wants to “educate people.”

“Simply to open their eyes and let them see what has happened on the map,” he said.

The advertisements have caught the eye of commuters in White Plains as well.

“I thought it was all settled back in the 1970s with the 6 Day War,” one man responded.

“My reaction is why is there an anti-Israel ad sitting here at the train station?” asked Cliff Argintar, of Hoboken, N.J.

Efune is calling for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to take the ads down. However, the MTA said it doesn’t restrict ads on the basis of viewpoint and while it doesn’t endorse the ad, the posters will remain up.

The Anti-Defamation League, for its part, called the ads “Deliberately misleading, biased and fundamentally anti-Israel.”

Related Articles

7 Comments

  • truth

    the dude who put these ads up doesent know his history there are no Palestinians all them are from other places (jordon ,syria) who came there in the forties and th land belonged to the british who had the right to make it a state for jews and land won by war is legally yours to if not the u.s should go back to the british to this add is so wrong and that dude who made it is a idiot

  • Ephraim Grushnit

    The ad definitely is misleading.
    The 1946 situation shows as green an area that was only partly inhabited/owned by Palestinians. For instance: there were no Palestinians in the Negev, only Bedouins.
    The UN-plan was only a plan, and not an actual situation, and besides: it was accepted by the Jewish inhabitants but rejected by the Arab inhabitants.
    The 1967 situation schows the Westbank as Palestinian territory but it was not: it was Jordanian. It also shows Gaza as Palestinian, but it was Egyptian.
    The 2010 situation on the ad is also untrue: almost the whole Westbank is still legally Palestinian land, but most of it is (for the time being) under Israeli control.
    This ad is one big lie!

    The Westbank was A lot of the territory under Jordanian (!)

  • AA

    How about if this Clifford fellow puts up an ad showing “shrinking Native American territory over the years”? Then he can put his money where his mouth is, vacate his property and hand it back to the local Native tribe.

  • Eliyahu

    Meir,
    What makes you feel this ad is not Anti-Semitic?
    Do you expect the add to say “Get out of Israel, Jews” or ”We hate you, Jews” to be classified as Anti-Semitic?
    You don’t have to read between the lines on this one.
    “Palestinian loss of land”?
    G-d gave this land to the Jewish people, as it’s written in the Torah, and it’s done-deal.
    Period.
    REMOVE THE AD!!

  • Lawsuit anyone?

    No One kicked anyone out. They left at the request of other Arabs so that the Arabs can try to destroy the Jews. They should go back to their own and ask for compensation.

    Could you imagine the same maps of Jews in Germany, Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Spain? There Jews were actually wiped out!

    I can’t believe the Transit Authority which is part of NYC would open themselves up to a law suit for defamation, incitement, etc. This happened in Seattle until the government stopped it. Someone should file a notice of claim for a class action.

    Although I like the trend of that map IE soon all Arabs will be out!