A federal judge just cosigned the Islamophobia of psycho Pam Geller and granted her access to NYC's buses and trains to promote her brand of hatred.

This is a monumental embarrassment to the entire city as well as New Yorkers at large.

A federal judge in Manhattan on Tuesday ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to display an ad from a pro-Israel group on buses after the agency declined to run it last year.
The group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, sued the authority in October, saying it had infringed on the group’s First Amendment rights by rejecting the ad. The authority had argued that the ad could be seen as a call to violence against Jews.

The ad shows a man with a scarf across his face next to the words, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” attributed to “Hamas MTV.” Below that, it reads: “That’s his Jihad. What’s yours?”

The judge, John G. Koeltl, of United States District Court, ruled that the ad qualified as protected speech and granted a preliminary injunction ordering the transportation authority to run the ad. He said the order would not take effect for 30 days so the agency could consider whether it would appeal the decision.

“While the court is sensitive to the M.T.A.’s security concerns, the defendants have not presented any objective evidence that the ‘Killing Jews advertisement’ would be likely to incite imminent violence,” Judge Koeltl wrote in the order.

How a judge could rule that these ads wouldn't incite violence is beyond me. Just the fact that Pam Geller's past actions helped fuel the massacre perpetrated by Anders Breivik in Norway should have been a hint.

Digby:

I don't normally buy the "yelling fire in a crowded theatre" arguments. But this really seems ugly and dumb. What's the point of it except to provoke some kind of violence? The good news is that New York is the most multi-cultural city in the world and will likely shrug this off as the Gelleresque for the absurdity it is. But you have to love the idea that the government works overtime spying on American Muslims for the smallest sign that a sad loner among them might say something fanatical (and then devise an elaborate sting to entrap them into doing it) while Pamela Geller can put terrorist recruiting posters up on buses perfectly legally.

Mayor de Blasio is not happy about these ads either:

The ads, paid for by flame-throwing blogger Pamela Geller, at a cost of $100,000, are intended as an “education campaign” to warn of the “problem with jihad” and Islamic sharia law, Geller said.

In one of the placard ads, Foley appears handcuffed, on his knees, next to the hooded, black-clad jihadist who is about to execute him — an image from the video released by the group Islamic State, which boasted of the execution.

The ad also contains a second photo, of the Briton suspected by some of being Foley’s killer. The Brit is shown in happier times, before he allegedly joined ISIS.

“Yesterday’s moderate is today’s headline,” the placard says.

A second ad contains a 1940s photo of a pro-Nazi Palestinian leader chatting with Adolf Hitler under the headline, “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Quran.”

In addition to the 100 buses, Geller’s ads will appear at the entrances of the E. 59th St. station on the Lexington Ave. line and the Columbus Circle station.

In a statement to the Daily News on Friday, Mayor de Blasio said, "These ads are outrageous, inflammatory and wrong, and have no place in New York City, or anywhere. These hateful messages serve only to divide and stigmatize when we should be coming together as one city."