SPRAY BATTLE: Mona Eltahawy was released from jail yesterday after spray-painting a pro-Israel poster and defender on Tuesday. (Kristy Leibowitz)
SPRAY BATTLE: Mona Eltahawy was released from jail yesterday (right) after spray-painting a pro-Israel poster and defender on Tuesday. (Steven Hirsch)
The Egyptian-born activist arrested for defacing an inflammatory subway ad that called the enemies of Israel “savages” said yesterday her pink spray-paint protest was inspired by equal parts fashion and pacifism.
“It was pink to match my pink raincoat [and] because pink is the least violent color of all,” Mona Eltahawy, 45, said after being arraigned in Manhattan on misdemeanor charges of criminal mischief, making graffiti and possession of a graffiti instrument. She is due back in court on Nov. 30.
Eltahawy — whom The Post videotaped spray-painting one of the ads in Times Square — was one of five people arrested in Manhattan Tuesday for allegedly defacing the subway signs.
The other four — Leena Widdi, 19, Sherry Wolf, 47, Kenneth Chan, 22, and Emmanuel Pardilla, 21 — were caught obscuring an ad in the 49th Street N/R/Q station, cops said.
They were charged with violating local law and unlawful posting of an advertisement. They all received summonses.
Unlike Eltahawy — who got a small amount of spray paint on a woman who tried to stop her from defacing the ads — the others were not detained overnight.
Eltahawy’s lawyer, Stanley Cohen, said his client was singled out because of the controversy around the ads, which went up on Monday in 10 subway stations.
The ads, paid for the by pro-Israel American Freedom Defense Initiative, read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel, defeat jihad.”
“I’ve never had a case for someone in this background . . . who did not get a desk-appearance ticket,” said Cohen, who has previously defended members of Hezbollah and Hamas.
“If the person who did this was named Schwartz and it was a Holocaust-denier poster, they’d get no worse than a summons and a violation.”
Eltahawy — who has appeared on CNN and MSNBC — said of her vandalism arrest and overnight holding-cell stay, “It was longer than I was held in Egypt during the uprising last year.”
In prior interviews, Eltahawy has said that she was sexually assaulted during her 12-hour detainment in Egypt last year in 2011.
Yesterday, an unrepentant Eltahawy tweeted, “As a US citizen I know that nonviolent civil disobedience is one of many ways to fight racism.”
Eltahawy — who has lived in Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UK — became a citizen last year.
She has spoken out against “virginity tests,” which some Egyptian women are subjected to before marriage. She also opposes the conservative Muslim practice of women wearing face veils.