October 7 Supporters Sponsor Times Square Billboard

The ICNA wants to convince the American public that Islam is inherently peaceful. To that end, the ICNA’s “GainPeace” project is currently investing $30,000 in a massive digital billboard advertisement in Times Square to “spotlight Islam’s core values of peace, unity and the sanctity of life,” according to a press release from the group.

By targeting “one of the world’s most iconic and busiest locations,” the ICNA’s billboard message will reach “over 450,000 pedestrians daily.” Project director Sabeel Ahmed says the project is necessary to showcase “the sanctity of human life” at a time “when innocent lives, especially of civilians, are being tragically lost.”

But what does the ICNA have to say about the sanctity of Jewish life? How does it view the taking of innocent Jewish lives, especially of civilians, in southern Israel on October 7, 2023?

To find that answer, one need not go further than the ICNA’s own website. A prominent section (https://icna.org/on-palestine-and-israel-correct-information-is-getting-through-to-more-americans/) showcases what the ICNA calls “just a few samples of honest and fair reporting on the current crisis.” These samples are “good information to give to non-Muslim Americans with whom you get in conversation about what is going on now in Palestine,” the website urges its readers.

The ICNA website then presents excerpts from the writings of five extremist authors in various publications. Some choice examples:

— “Israel is realizing right now that it can’t oppress its neighbors forever without expecting retaliation. Palestinians have tried many methods of reasoning with Israel, only to be turned down; many nonviolent forms of protest, only to be gunned down.”

— “Hamas initiated these hostilities – because, how long should humans live, starving, in a cage, before they fight back? What else did Israel expect would happen?”

— “Regimes implanted and maintained by violence engender violence…. The Palestinians, like all colonized people, have a right to armed resistance under international law.”

— “How can you trap 2.3 million people in Gaza…and not expect a violent response?”

— “The Palestinians have ‘started’ nothing. They have managed, after so much struggle, to find a way to hurt their tormentor.”

It also includes the usual selection of anti-Israel slurs: Israel is “an apartheid state” … it is engaged in “a slow-motion campaign of ethnic cleansing” … “the Al-Aqsa mosque has been desecrated again and again”… and “Israel is illegally holding over five thousand political prisoners” (because the ICNA considers convicted Arab terrorists to be “political prisoners”).

These are the vicious lies and support for anti-Jewish violence that the ICNA considers “honest” and “fair.” The “good information” that the ICNA says should be “given to non-Muslim Americans” consists of unabashed justification of the mass murders and gang rapes and decapitation of babies on October 7 that Hamas terrorists committed.

So with one hand, the ICNA claims to “foster interfaith understanding and spread a message of peace” in Times Square – while its other hand openly fosters hatred and a message of war.

New York City’s Department of Transportation, together with the nonprofit group Times Square Alliance, determines who can advertise on the billboards there. Department of Transportation officials might say there is nothing inherently objectionable about the specific content of the ICNA’s digital billboard messages about “peace.” Yet there is something very objectionable about the ICNA itself – it’s a violence-promoting hate group.

If a hate group such as the Ku Klux Klan wanted to sponsor a Times Square billboard about “peace” – while simultaneously running a website promoting racist violence against minorities – would the NYC Department of Transportation permit it? Hopefully not.

Hopefully, New York’s officials would treat the Klan as a pariah, and reject any and all advertising from it. That is how the ICNA should be treated, so long as it publicly endorses the mass murder, torture, kidnapping, and rape of Israeli Jews.

Moshe Phillips, a veteran pro-Israel activist is the Chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI). He is a commentator on Jewish affairs, and an author. A past board member of the American Zionist Movement, Phillips previously served as National Director of the U.S. division of Herut, and on the staff of CAMERA (Philadelphia). He also was a delegate to the 2020 World Zionist Congress.