Blog

Blood Libel on Wheels: Anti-Israel Activists Using Digital Billboard Trucks to Share Antisemitic Messages

Billboard trucks primary

A digital billboard truck sponsored by the Voice for Humanity Project 

In recent years, activists have harnessed the marketing power of digital billboard trucks to promote their messages. Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, anti-Israel activists have increasingly used these vehicles, adorned with propaganda, to spread anti-Zionist and antisemitic themes, including a modern form of the blood libel: that Israelis harvest Palestinian organs. These trucks, bearing a variety of anti-Israel and antisemitic messages, are sponsored by U.S. organizations including the Voice for Humanity Project, Taxpayers for Peace and Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation.  

The New Jersey-based nonprofit Voice for Humanity Project — formed in the wake of October 7 — coordinates many of the digital truck campaigns in partnership with the Palestinian American Community Center (also based in New Jersey). 

The messages on Voice for Humanity Project’s digital trucks have regularly crossed the line into antisemitism, with commentary and imagery that play into antisemitic tropes about disloyalty, power and greed. One message read, “Israel has more control over America than Americans do,” while another claims, “Your tax dollars have funded Israel’s war crimes” alongside a cartoon of Uncle Sam wearing a hat with an Israeli flag (an unsubtle nod to the idea that Israel exercises power over U.S. affairs). Other messages include Nazi and Holocaust comparisons, including, “Israel is the New Nazi Germany,” “Zionism = fascism” and “Israel is committing a Holocaust in Gaza.”  

billboard trucks image 2

Digital billboard trucks sponsored by the Voice for Humanity Project seen in New York 

 

The Voice for Humanity Project trucks have also promoted conspiratorial claims about Israel allegedly “harvesting” Palestinian organs. As ADL previously noted, since October 7, numerous anti-Israel groups have shared this unfounded conspiracy theory about a supposed widespread Israeli practice of organ harvesting.  

This emerged out of a single scandal from the 1990s, in which one Israeli facility (the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute) was found to have taken organs from a range of bodies — IDF soldiersIsraeli civilians, Palestinians, foreign workers and others whose corpses came into the Institute — without seeking permission from the families of the deceased. The pathologist in charge was removed in 2012, and authorities confirmed the practice ended in 2010. This conspiracy theory is also rooted in the age-old antisemitic blood libel trope that accuses Jews of murdering non-Jewish children to use their blood to perform religious rituals.  

Voice for Humanity Project digital billboard trucks have displayed variations of the organ harvesting message, including: “Daily reminder: Israel steals Palestinian organs.” Another version features a rotating message of alleged Israeli misdeeds that merges a variety of antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes, including stating that Israel “steals organs,” “lies religiously,” “shelters pedophiles” and “buys politicians.”  

billboard trucks 3

A digital billboard truck sponsored by the Voice for Humanity Project seen in New Jersey

 

As of early February 2024, the Voice for Humanity Project claims it has created 25 digital truck campaigns and more than a dozen traditional billboard campaigns across multiple states, including California, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The effort has been supported by a crowdfunding campaign on LaunchGood, which has raised more than $20,000 to date. 

The Voice for Humanity Project is not the only anti-Israel group that has deployed digital billboard trucks in high visibility areas in the past five months. Taxpayers for Peace, a collective launched after October 7, created a “Paint the Nation Palestine Mass Media Awareness Campaign.” The campaign funds video trucks, billboards, mass mailers and other efforts intended “to help steer the messaging about the plight of the Palestinians” across the country, often targeting cities in California and New York, as well as Washington, D.C.  

Donations for Taxpayers for Peace, which are handled by the Northern California Islamic Council (NCIC), a registered non-profit, have amounted to more than $160,000 on LaunchGood, in addition to donations collected directly on the NCIC website. Their digital billboard messages have leaned into antisemitic tropes, including dual loyalty accusations against pro-Israel politicians and commentary about the alleged control exercised by the so-called “Israel lobby.” 

Examples of these statements — some of which are paired with explicitly antisemitic imagery — include: “Israel lobbies will spend $100 million to take out anyone who criticizes Israel,” “The Israeli lobby made 98% of their candidates win in 2022” and “Can’t afford healthcare? Sorry, gotta give Israel billions to bomb children.” These messages have sometimes been displayed on trucks strategically parked in locations that correspond to the text, such as outside the U.S. Capitol and near a hospital. 

billboard trucks 4

Taxpayers for Peace-sponsored digital billboard messages displayed on a truck parked outside the U.S. Capitol

 

The group Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation, in partnership with the Ibn Asheer Institute of Islam, a Las Vegas-based non-profit organization, has similarly solicited donations from supporters to sponsor digital trucks. That campaign has generated over $9,000 on Every.org.  

The campaign has funded a digital billboard truck that has taken several trips along the Las Vegas Strip, displaying images of Gaza during wartime alongside anti-Zionist messages like “From the river to the sea.” The truck also promoted the website for If Americans Knew, a radical anti-Zionist group led by antisemite Alison Weir