Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – California has apologized for allowing someone in the US state to register a license plate mocking the October 7 attacks on Israel. The apology comes after activist group StopAntisemitism flagged a Tesla Cybertruck seen around Los Angeles sporting a plate that read “LOLOCT7,” which it said celebrated “terrorism against the Jewish people.” LOL is a common abbreviation for “laughing out loud.”
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said on social media on Thursday that it would be acting to rescind the plate, which fell foul of its own rules. “This is unacceptable and disturbing,” the agency wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “The DMV is taking swift action to recall these shocking plates, and we will immediately strengthen our internal review process to ensure such an egregious oversight never happens again. We sincerely apologize that these personalized plates were not properly rejected during our review process.”
There are over 30 million vehicles in California, the vast majority of which have regular license plates. But the DMV allows drivers — for an extra fee — to personalise plates, provided the resulting message does not “carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency,” according to its website. Examples of banned plates include swear words, and racially or ethnically degrading terms.
Islamist militants abducted 251 hostages during the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. This count includes hostages who died or were killed while held in Gaza. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,805 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
© 2024 AFP
