Pro-Palestinian group targets AIPAC with DC ad campaign

A group critical of Israel launched an ad campaign in Washington to coincide with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit and AIPAC’s annual policy conference.

The Palestine Advocacy Project, which until February was called Ads Against Apartheid, posted a large banner and deployed a “mobile billboard” highlighting the impact on Gaza civilians of last summer’s Israel-Hamas war.

The banner appears in Washington’s Convention Center Metro station, which is near the site of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s conference.

In a news release on its website, the Palestine Advocacy Project said the ads mark the launch of a national advertising campaign on public transit systems and billboard trucks in seven major US cities.

The campaign “aims to educate the American public on Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory, its housing demolition and land theft policies, and its violence toward Palestinians,” the group said.

“Lawmakers need to hear the clear message that US military aid to Israel is no longer acceptable,” a Palestine Advocacy Project board member, Clare Maxwell, said in the news release.

In a February 19 news release announcing its new name and other organizational changes, the group noted that “while we remain firmly and vocally opposed to Apartheid, we feel that it is critical to emphasize that we are for Palestine.”

Last week activist group American Muslims for Palestine launched a bus ad campaign in DC, also scheduled to coincide with Netanyahu’s speech, calling for an end to US support of Israel.