The Chapel Hill Town Council has finally made a decision on the town's bus advertising policy, ruling to allow political ads and marking the conflict as a victory for freedom of expression and the public marketplace of ideas.
Expression of all opinions is allowed, but ads cannot be false, misleading, deceptive or disrespectful. This is noble, but chances are, it won't last.
These new restrictions definitively rule out the American Freedom Defense Initiative's strongly worded pro-Israel ad, but AFDI director Pamela Geller has already demonstrated that she won't give up easily.
"In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel; defeat Jihad," reads the AFDI's ad. The ad comes across as dehumanizing and incredibly demeaning toward the entire nation of Palestine -- not to mention the Islamic faith as a whole -- and Geller has made it clear she will sue the town if she isn't allowed to run the ad in response to an ad she claims is anti-Semitic.
Based on common interpretation of the First Amendment and precedents set in other states, Geller will likely get her way. Chapel Hill's local government and media seem oblivious to this same battle taking place outside North Carolina, but the AFDI ad has already been prominently featured on public transportation in Washington D.C., San Francisco, and New York City.
Geller had to take legal action to run it in New York and Washington D.C., but the courts did not stop her. If she does the same here, as she said she will, then Chapel Hill's rule against "disrespectful" ads will likely be brushed aside as a well-meaning but thoroughly unconstitutional attempt at maintaining civil discourse.
So where do we go from there? Must divisive and "disrespectful" perspectives simply be tolerated? Should the bus advertising policy be modified yet again, removing political speech from buses and sheltering citizens from opinions they might not agree with?
The community should take this opportunity to participate in the public forum that's been created. More organizations should take a stand and let Geller and the local community know what they believe in.
One portion of the community that especially needs to make itself heard is the Jewish population. When the first ad was put on buses by the local Church of Reconciliation, it was treated as if it was uniformly offensive to all people of Jewish faith or descent, but no one has seen fit to mention that the ad was produced with input from a wide interfaith community, including local organization Jews for a Just Peace NC.
"Join with us," said the ad that started the controversy. "Build peace with justice and equality; end U.S. military aid to Israel." The ad shows Israeli Jeff Halper and Palestinian Salim Shawamreh, each holding their children. The ad could be construed as offering a potentially callous decision to a complicated and admittedly problematic conflict, but to see it as anti-Semitic is simply irrational, especially considering the real story behind the ad.
Halper, an Israeli Jew and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is the founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, which works to preserve and rebuild Palestinian houses in the occupied territories after they've been destroyed by Israeli forces. Halper and his organization have rebuilt Salim Shawamreh's house five times already, and they plan to continue doing so until it stays standing for Shawamreh and his family.
Just like Halper and Jews for a Just Peace NC, we should all seize this opportunity to join with the Church of Reconciliation and send an overwhelming message of peace, drowning out Geller and the AFDI's hateful, one-sided rhetoric.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117416616/Campus-BluePrint-Winter-2012-Online
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