Pro-Israel Group Places Response Ads at Train Stations

A series of pro-Israel ads are running this month at 25 Metro-North stations around Westchester and Fairfield counties.

The ads are from a group called StandWithUs, and are in several iterations, including a 2013 trip from President Barack Obama meeting with Miss Israel 2013 – she was the first Ethiopian-Israeli to win – one that showed the country's role in helping in the aftermath of an earthquake in Haiti, and another of Israeli and Palestinian boys together in a photo with a tag that says “Say No to Terrorism and Say Yes to Peace.”

The group took out the ads in response to an train station ad campaign earlier this year from American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which described Israel as practicing apartheid and called for stopping aid to Israel from the United States. It has made similar response campaigns before, including in 2012 and 2011.

“These anti-Israel billboard campaigns promote misinformation and prejudice, not peace,” the group announced in a statement for its ads.

In a statement, Roz Rothstein, who is CEO and co-founder of StandWithUs, said that anti-Israel groups try campaigns to undermine America's support and that they are misrepresentative.

Kristin Szremski, a spokeswoman for AMP, responded to the group's new ad campaign and defended the group's claim that Israel practices apartheid.

“First, it is important to realize that StandWithUs and other pro-occupation groups are trying to deflect attention away from the fact Israel's occupation of Palestine is against international law and that some Israeli policies fit the legal definition of apartheid,” she wrote. “A 2009 study by the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa uses international law to make a solid case that what is happening in the occupied territories as well as within Israel rises to the legal definition of apartheid.”

Szremski also wrote, “that AMP supports free and open conversations about Israeli policies.”

She continued, “Our job is to make sure the Palestinian narrative is heard because once Americans understand what the occupation is, how it goes against the grain of the American values of justice, liberty and self-determination, and once they understands how we as taxpayers fund this occupation with more than $3 billion per year, they will demand Congress create a more equitable foreign policy in the Middle East that will uphold human rights for everyone who lives there. Everyone.”

StandWithUs has its ads running from May 13 to June 9 and copies of their ads are attached to this story as photos. The ads will run at the following Metro-North stations:

Bedford Hills

Cos Cob

White Plains

Harrison

Pelham

Rowayton

Stamford

Noroton Heights

Westport

Crestwood

Wakefield

125th Street

Mount Vernon

Fordham

Ardsley

Ossining

Irvington

Hastings

Ludlow

Riverdale

Yonkers

Croton-Harmon

Spuyten Duyvil

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This story was written by Tom Auchterlonie and posted by Kevin Zawacki.