Geller, born to Jewish parents Reuben ("Ruby") and Lillian Geller, is the third of four sisters. Growing up in Hewlett Harbor, Long Island, New York, she helped out in her father's business, where she learned to speak fluent Spanish. Two of her sisters became doctors, and the third became a teacher.

Geller attended Lynbrook High School and Hofstra University, though she left before completing her degree. She was married to Michael Oshry from 1990 until the couple divorced in 2007, and is the single mother of four children.

Geller spent most of the 1980s working at the New York Daily News, first as a financial analyst and then in the advertising and marketing areas. She was then the associate publisher and top-ranking business executive of The New York Observer for five years, from 1989 through 1994, when she quit to stay home with her four daughters.

She later co-founded the anti-jihadist Freedom Defense Initiative organization (FDI) with Robert Spencer, a blogger and author of articles and books relating to Islam and Islamic terrorism, who is the founder of Jihad Watch.

She denies accusations of being anti-Muslim, saying that is "a slanderous slur and it's unfair". She said:

the ground zero mosque ... To me it was an outrage, to me it was deeply offensive, to me it was indicative that interfaith dialogue and mutual respect and mutual understanding is a one-way street with Islamic supremacists, not Muslims. I believe that Muslims are more victimized by Islamic supremacists than even non-Muslims.

Geller has also lent her support to a number of other political causes. She has strongly defended former Serbian president Slobodan Milo?evi?, denied the existence of Serbian concentration camps in the 1990s, said that black South Africans are engaging in a "genocide" against whites, and expressed support for the far right English Defence League.

In 2008, Geller co-wrote an editorial for Arutz Sheva expressing her distaste for fellow Jews who are not politically conservative:

It galls me that the Jews I fight for are self-destructive, suicidal even. Here in America (and the world over), Israel's real friends are in the Republican Party and yet over 80% of American Jews are Democrats. I don't get it. The conventional wisdom on the Left is that Israel is an oppressor and her actions are worse than the world's most depraved and dangerous regimes. Chomsky, Finkelstein, Soros—these men are the killers.

She wrote: "Dr. Martin Luther King did not suffer liars that declared that they don’t hate the Jews, just Zionism. Dr. King brilliantly dismantles such rhetoric: 'When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.'" She encouraged Israel to "stand loud and proud. Give up nothing. Turn over not a pebble. For every rocket fired, drop a MOAB. Take back Gaza. Secure Judea and Samaria. Stop buying Haaretz. Throw leftists bums out."

She has won several awards for her blog, and was an official blogger at the Republican National Convention of 2008.

A book she co-authored with Spencer, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America (Simon and Schuster), with a foreword by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton, was published in July 2010. The book criticizes the Obama administration's treatment of the free-market system, freedom of speech, and foreign policy.

Geller and Robert Spencer co-founded Stop Islamization of America. In May 2010, they began a strong campaign against the proposed Park51 Islamic community center and mosque, which Geller has referred to as the "Ground Zero Mega Mosque". She claims that Park51 is viewed by Muslims as a "triumphal" monument built on "conquered land". In addition to opposing Park51, Geller has opposed other mosques and argued that the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which was built on top of the Jewish Temple, should be removed. She has also appeared on an array of cable news shows speaking out against the proposed Islamic Community Center.

Stop Islamization of America has also sponsored ads, which carry messages such as, "Fatwa on Your Head?" and "Leaving Islam?", in several cities including New York City and Miami, pointing readers to a website called RefugefromIslam.com.[1] Geller said the ads were meant to provide resources for Muslims who were afraid to leave the religion.[2]

Geller first blogged in "Atlas Shrugs" about the proposed New York mosque in reaction to coverage in The New York Times on December 8, 2009. On December 21, she again blogged on the subject, referring to it as "Mosque at Ground Zero" and calling it "a stab in the eye". Geller next blogged about the building on May 24, 2010, when she reported on a self-selected reader poll connected with a report in the New York Daily News, urging her readers to vote in it. This is when she first used the phrase "Mega Mosque at Ground Zero".

Commenting on the controversy, Geller said,

I'm not leading the charge against the Islamic center near Ground Zero. The majority of Americans — 70% — find this deeply insulting, offensive. To call it anti-Muslim is a gross misrepresentation and to say that I'm responsible for all this emotion, again a gross misrepresentation.

When asked in an August 17, 2010, interview on CNN whether she agreed "that the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were practicing a perverted form of Islam, and that is not what is going to be practiced at this mosque", she responded "I will say that the Muslim terrorists were practicing pure Islam, original Islam."

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, criticized Geller, stating:

People say don't give her too much credit, she's a fringe character, but she is a fringe character who every day is on CNN, Fox, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She is the driving force behind the Islamic center campaign. I would say that she is the queen of the Muslim bashers, I see her rise and the rise of these anti-Islam hate groups going hand in hand.

Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America, concurred with Hooper, remarking that "she's been instrumental, she has whipped up hatred in the right-wing blogosphere and now that's spilled out into the wider community." Media Matters further suggested that "Geller's history of outrageous, inflammatory and false claims, particularly when it comes to issues related to Islam, demonstrate that she cannot be expected to make accurate statements and should not be rewarded with a platform on national television."

The name of Geller's website and blog, "Atlas Shrugs", is a reference to novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand's championing of individual rights, and Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. Geller calls Rand "the greatest philosopher in human history". She says her blog and its purpose are "clearly defined by Rand's philosophy." The blog concentrates on what Geller perceives to be a violent threat to the United States by Islamist extremists and liberal politicians.

As of October 2010, the blog was receiving one million unique visitors a month.

In 2006, when Muslims rioted over cartoons of Muhammad printed in a Danish newspaper, Atlas Shrugs posted the cartoons (unlike much of the news media), and its hits increased dramatically to tens of thousands.

In 2008, for Atlas Shrugs she combed through lists of donations given to Barack Obama's campaign. Others then did the same, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. Donors with names such as "Es Ech" and "Doodad Pro" turned up, and a conservative activist said he contributed to Obama under the name Osama bin Laden.

In November 2008, she captured a conversation by Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) on video, and posted it on YouTube. In it, after prefacing his remarks by saying he had "no personal knowledge" of the matter and his statement was merely his "guess", he went on to say that Obama "didn’t have the political courage to want to make the statement of walking out" of Trinity United Church of Christ when he realized that Rev. Jeremiah Wright was "a nut" and "lunatic," because "you don’t walk out of a church with 8,000 members in your district." After Geller released the video, Nadler said: "I made a thoughtless comment yesterday which does not reflect the way I feel about Barack Obama".

The blog was among the first on November 5, 2009, to declare the belief that the Fort Hood shooting was a "Muslim terror attack." Geller later noted that the Pentagon recent report into the Fort Hood shooting did not mention possible religious motivations behind the attack, and argued that self-imposed censorship is hurting U.S. understanding of the wars it is engaged in. She said: "When nowhere in that document was Islam or Jihad mentioned, then Houston, we have a problem. People need to understand what is the motivation."

Controversial postings on "Atlas Shrugs" have included a number of false claims, including that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan (who is Jewish) supports Nazi ideology (accompanied by a fake picture of her in a Nazi uniform), a video suggesting that Muslims have sex with goats, a doctored photo showing President Obama urinating on an American flag and false claims that Obama's mother was involved in pornography and that Obama "was involved with a crack whore in his youth". Geller has also used her site to accuse President Obama of anti-Semitism and doing the bidding of "Islamic overlords," while posting an essay suggesting, without any evidence, that the President is the "love child" of Malcolm X. During an RT Television News interview, reporter Lauren Lister repeatedly questioned Geller's claim that she is not anti-Muslim, at one point calling attention to Geller's having posted a drawing of Muhammad on her blog with the face of a pig superimposed over his own. Geller responded by saying "I don't know where it is in America that you can't make jokes or make fun."

"I share the EDL's goals. We need to encourage rational, reasonable groups that oppose the Islamisation of the west."

—Pamela Geller

Geller, who was described by The Observer as the "darling of the Tea Party's growing anti-Islamic wing", has advocated forming an alliance between the Tea Party Movement and the English Defense League. In October 2010, Geller met with EDL leaders in New York City, and defended the group's actions.

Books

• The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America, Pamela Geller with Robert Spencer, foreword by (former) Ambassador John R. Bolton, (Simon and Schuster, July 2010) ISBN 978-1439189306

Articles

• "Why There Shouldn’t Be a Mosque at Ground Zero", Pamela Geller, Human Events, September 4, 2010
• "Ground Zero Imam is No Moderate", Pamela Geller, Human Events, August 24, 2010
• "Free Speech Wins A Narrow Victory In New York", Pamela Geller, Fox News, August 12, 2010