James Foley’s Family Gets Pam Geller To Pull Anti-Islam Ads

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The family of slain journalist James Foley has convinced anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller to pull an ad that featured an image from Foley’s beheading video.

Geller’s outfit, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, had prepared the ads to run this week on buses and subway stops in New York City and San Francisco, CNN reported Monday.

The Foleys’ attorney contacted David Yerushalmi, the lawyer representing Geller’s organization. Yerushalmi responded that Geller had agreed to withdraw this particular ad. He told CNN it was pulled “as a matter of compassion for the family.”

Images of the ad showed the words, “Yesterday’s Moderate Is Today’s Headline” hovering above a frame from Foley’s execution tape and a purported photo of his killer in Britain before joining ISIL.

Geller, who once said she takes being labeled a “hate group” as a “badge of honor,” told CNN’s Rosa Flores that “frankly, I think that that ad does a service to the family to expose the ideology that incites this kind of barbarity.”

It’s the latest incident in a long history of legal disputes over Geller’s campaigns, which she consistently claims are anti-jihad, not anti-Muslim (despite the word Islam appearing repeatedly in various ads.)

Geller has fought several court battles to display her ads, winning a 2012 case in Manhattan that forces all subsequent ads to contain a disclaimer: “The display of this advertisement does not imply MTA’s endorsement of any views expressed.”

One of Geller’s ads already in circulation shows a portrait of Adolf Hitler with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini. It reads: “Islamic Jew-hatred: It’s in the Quran. Stop the hate.”

Her website said she is still in the process of appealing a similar case in Boston, in which the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority prevented her from running pro-Israel ads on public buses.

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