Photos from the rally in S.F. on February 16, 2003

These photos were taken at the anti-war rally in San Francisco on Saturday, February 16th, 2003.

This surely takes the prize as the most anti-Semitic sign ever seen at any protest rally in the United States. It's anti-Semitic on so many levels that it really bears close inspection. To help you analyze it closer (and to dispel any doubts that the sign is actually real), I've presented two more images of it below: one of the same picture at full resolution, and another snapshot of the sign as it appeared in the march.

The same picture at full resolution. Notice the obscure reference to "Counterfeit Jews." This is apparently part of a little-known anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Africans are the real Hebrews of the Bible, and that those people who now call themselves Jews are all phonies, having stolen the title of the "chosen people" from the Africans, who are the true chosen people. At least that's what several people familiar with the phrase have said. As for the rest of the words and imagery...come to your own conclusions.

Here the sign is visible "in context," as it appeared at the protest. There was another sign by the same artist right next to it, with an anti-capitalism message. As the banner right behind them indicates, the sign-bearers seemed to be part of the International ANSWER contingent, though I'm not sure they were actually marching as part of any group.

I hadn't seen so many pictures of Hitler since the last time I was in Nuremberg. The banner is drawing a parallel between 9-11 and the Reichstag Fire (depicted on the left).

More comparisons to the Reichstag Fire. The implication of both these signs is that Al-Qaeda and Islamic extremists had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks, and that 9-11 was in fact planned and carried out by the United States itself as a pretext to declare war on the world.