This plate was too much to stomach.
The Department of Motor Vehicles yanked a Bay Ridge driver’s vanity license plates after complaints from locals and questions from this paper.
The matte black Dodge Charger sporting a pair of custom, state-issued tags that read “Hammas” had parked at the corner of Bay Ridge and Third avenues daily for several years without incident, according to locals. But after a picture of the car — which also featured a Palastinian flag sunshade in the windshield — went viral on Sept. 3, the state agency said the plates had to go.
“[Department of Motor Vehicles] is pulling this plate off the road as patently offensive,” said agency spokesman Peter Bucci.
The tags are an apparent reference to the Palestinian political party Hamas, which the U.S. State Department classifies as a terrorist organization. The car’s front plate holder appeared to confirm that intent by referencing Al-Qassam, Hamas’s military wing.
The Department sent a letter to the vehicle’s owner stating that the tags had to be changed immediately, Bucci said.
And by the next day they were gone.
A neighbor agreed that the plates were offensive.
“There were Palestinian flags, which is fine, but something representing a terrorist groups, that’s going too far — especially in New York,” said George, who lives nearby and declined to give his last name.
The state maintains a list of banned vanity tags, which mainly consists of sexual or racially charged terms, and their myriad possible alpha-numeric variations. References to terrorist groups are not explicitly prohibited, but the Department’s commissioner has discretion to pull any plate that is “obscene, lewd, lascivious, derogatory to a particular ethnic or other group, or patently offensive,” Bucci said.
The Bay Ridge driver is not the first local to proclaim automotive allegiance in recent weeks as strife between Palestinians and Israelites hit fever pitch in the Gaza Strip. Police arrested a Borough Park teen for disrupting religious service at a mosque after the teen parked a car festooned in Israeli flags in front of the Fifth Avenue house of worship and blasted Israeli music on July 18.
