image via pam geller 
 
 For some weird reason, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) wasn’t keen on running ads which read “Killing Jews is worship that draws us closer to Allah.” But thanks to a judge’s decision on Tuesday, these catchy anti-Semitic-seeming-but-actually-Islamophobic posters will be coming soon to a bus near you (if you live in New York)! The ad had quoted a Palestinian TV station run by the Hamas government of the Gaza Strip as saying that “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah.” 
 
 In a ruling dated Monday but released Tuesday, Federal District Court Judge John Koeltl said the ad was protected political speech under the First Amendment and that a government agency cannot refuse it based on unspecific fears that the ads would incite violence. 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. “Under the First Amendment, the fear of such spontaneous attacks, without more, cannot override individuals’ rights to freedom of expression,” Judge Koeltl said, noting both that the ads had essentially already ran without incident in Chicago and San Francisco. He also said the MTA claim that the ad would incite violence “thoroughly unpersuasive.” 
 
 “The defendants contend that the advertisement could be read as urging a subset of Islamic extremists to follow Hamas’s command, but if that group is as violent and radicalized as the defendants contend, presumably they would not need a bus advertisement to remind them of Hamas’s interpretation of the Quran,” Judge Koeltl wrote. At her site, Ms. Geller called the decision “another huge AFDI victory for freedom and individual rights … The Judge came down on our side on every point, upholding the Constitution and beating back sharia restrictions on free speech.” 
 
 Ms. Geller’s ads parody a previous ad campaign by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called “MyJihad,” which paints “jihad” as about personal struggle against sins or temptations and not a call to wage holy war against infidels. The ad in question was paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), a so called “Pro-Israel” organization, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labels a hate group, lead by Pamela Geller, whom the SPLC calls, “the anti-Muslim movement’s most flamboyant figurehead.” You may remember Geller from her previous tasteless and hateful campaigns like the San Francisco bus signs which compared Muslims to Nazis and said “Stop the hate… End all U.S. aid to Islamic countries.” Or the Washington DC-based billboards which read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. The judge stayed his order for a month in order to let any appeals go forward, though MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said the agency hadn’t decided what to do yet.
– Soon, you could see MTA buses in New York with the words "Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah" on the side. That's because a controversial pro-Israel group wants to run the ads—they show a man with a Palestinian keffiyeh covering his face alongside the aforementioned quote, which is attributed to "Hamas MTV," plus the slogan, "That's his Jihad. What's yours?"—and this week a federal judge decreed that the MTA must comply in order to abide by the First Amendment, Courthouse News reports. (There is no "Hamas MTV"; the ad is actually referencing a music video militants broadcast in the Gaza Strip.) The decision won't take effect for a month, in case the agency wants to appeal, the New York Times reports. The pro-Israel organization in question is Pamela Geller's American Freedom Defense Initiative, which has previously brought us anti-Islam ads in New York and Chicago, ads comparing jihadists to "savages," and ads showing a plane about to hit the World Trade Center. (The Southern Poverty Law Center labels the AFDI a hate group, Raw Story notes.) The group sued the MTA after the "Killing Jews" ads were initially rejected. Though the MTA says it fears the ads could be seen as calling for harm to Jews, the judge noted that similar ads in Chicago and San Francisco in 2013 did not result in violence. The ad is a parody of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' "My Jihad" campaign, which seeks to frame jihad as a "personal struggle against sins or temptations" rather than holy war, the Washington Times notes.