Leaving Islam Ads on the road again!
I am thrilled to report that the legal matter with Miami Dade Transit has been settled. Not only will FDI and SIOA's buses be going back up, but another twenty will be added to the original buy and rolling down the sweet streets of Collins Avenue.
This is a huge victory on the constitutional issues. This is the work of SIOA. Have you joined our Facebook group yet? Go here now! Have you made a contribution to the bus campaign? Robert and I want to roll this out nationwide. We have no big money, big donors. We aren't Daniel Pipes or CSP or FDD -- we are two people fighting with all the gusto we can muster.
Every dime you contribute goes into these initiatives like FDI at CPAC (buy the DVD), the Aqsa Parvez Memorial, Geert Wilders at CPAC -- these were actions that I developed and executed with my indispensable colleague Robert Spencer.
But we cannot do it without you. CANNOT. I am not CAIR with 50 million in dirty Saudi dollars. I am the individual -- trying to change the course of human events. We make things happen. We are on the offense in this war on the West.
Help us. Make a Paypal contribution NOW to director@jihadwatch.org (still waiting on a 501c status for SIOA).
We are going nationwide with this campaign, we need dough for buses and lawyers. Ads will be back up May 3rd.
Here is the our lawyer, David Yerushalmi's, statement: Case Demonstrates that CAIR is a Fraudulent Civil Rights Organization Lobbying on behalf of Hamas and the OIC:
April 21, 2010 – Miami, Florida: When the South Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) pressured the Miami-Dade Country Transit Authority to yank bus panel ads contracted and paid for by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer of the Freedom Defense Initiative because the ads were “offensive to Muslims”, the two activists turned to the Law Offices of David Yerushalmi, P.C. for help. Mr. Yerushalmi joined forces with the Thomas More Law Center and the two law firms began preparing a federal complaint alleging breach of contract and a violation of Ms. Geller’s and Mr. Spencer’s First Amendment Rights.
The bus ad, which appears immediately below, began running on Tuesday, April 13th. Just two days later, on Thursday, after pressure from CAIR, the bus ads had already been pulled down and Mr. Yerushalmi’s clients received notice of the ad contract termination through media reports on Friday.
CAIR, as it typically does, issued nationwide press releases and blasted emails to tens of thousands of outlets on Friday crowing over its “victory” of suppressing free speech on the grounds that the ads promoted “bigotry”. Newspaper and other media stories in the Miami Herald, the Orlando Sentinel, Fox Business News, and NBC ran blindly with the CAIR-generated story on Friday with headlines like: “Miami-Dade Transit Throws Islamic Ad Under the Bus.”
Ironically, CAIR, which has been named by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI as a Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group and unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror fund raising trial—a trial which culminated in guilty verdicts for all of the Muslim Brotherhood defendants—claims it is “the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization.”
“It is ironic,” Mr. Yerushalmi noted, “that the media allows CAIR to claim the mantle of a civil rights organization when it embraces censorship by the government all in the service of the “anti-blasphemy” platform of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), which calls for international legislation providing for criminal penalties against anyone who “insults Islam and its prophet Mohammed.”
Mr. Yerushalmi added that the Center for Security Policy, a leading Washington D.C. national security think tank run by former Reagan administration official Frank Gaffney, has documented that CAIR is an illegal, unregistered foreign agent of the OIC, receiving millions of dollars from Islamic countries in order to pursue their political goals in the U.S. (See the CAIR Observatory at www.cairunmasked.org.) Mr. Yerushalmi is General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy.
By Friday, the day after the bus ads had been pulled, Mr. Yerushalmi and his co-counsel Robert Muise were prepared to go into federal court early the next week. A teleconference was arranged first with the Miami-Dade County Attorney’s office, which took place Monday afternoon. After listening to Mr. Yerushalmi’s brief, the county attorneys conceded the ads should not have been pulled. By Tuesday, Mr. Yerushalmi had negotiated a full and complete retraction of the contract termination with a NY-based attorney for CBS Outdoor. Not only would the original 10 king-sized ads go back up on the Transit Authority buses, but CBS would run an additional 20 king-sized bus ads for the same original contract price.
The new agreement was inked and signed by Wednesday, April 21. The ads are expected to go back up by ____.
“This is not just an important day for the First Amendment. It is a ‘teaching moment’ to the media and to others in various government agencies who come across CAIR,” Mr. Yerushalmi added. “CAIR is a criminal organization with ties to Hamas and other jihadists. This is not my opinion but the considered view of the U.S. Attorney’s office, the FBI, and the federal courts, all based on the evidence CAIR has never refuted. If you find yourself on the same side of an issue with CAIR, you’d better examine the facts a bit more closely. You’re likely in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood, even if only unwittingly.”
Mr. Yerushalmi is currently prosecuting two separate fraud cases against CAIR brought by Muslim American former CAIR clients who were defrauded by CAIR.
About David Yerushalmi, Esq.
David Yerushalmi has been practicing law for more than 26 years. He is a litigator specializing in securities law, public policy relating to national security, and public interest law. Mr. Yerushalmi is licensed and practices in Washington D.C., New York, California, and Arizona.
UPDATE Robert has a great post here.
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