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DMV pulls HAMMAS plate

Agency says writing on back of NYC vehicle is ‘patently offensive’ and can be understood as message of support for terror group

By ToI Staff 5 September 2014, 5:15 pm 4

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Screenshot from NY1 showing the car in New York bearing the 'HAMMAS' license plate.

A car license plate with the letters “HAMMAS” inscribed on it will be revoked and confiscated from its owner, after authorities deemed that the writing may be interpreted as a message of support for the Gaza-based Palestinian terror group Hamas.

According to New York Magazine, the letters “AL QASSM,” most likely a reference to Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades — which have been responsible for multiple terror attacks on Israeli citizens — were written in red beneath the plate of the car. The car itself, a black Dodge which had been parked in a Brooklyn neighborhood, had a Palestinian flag stretched across its front windshield, witnesses said.

The New York Department of Motor Vehicles stressed it would revoke the “patently offensive” plate as soon as possible, NY1 News reported.

“The group represented by the name on the plate is on the list of entities designated by the US Government as a terrorist organization,” DMV representative Jackie McGinnis told the news outlet.

The DMV added that the plate should have never been issued in the first place.