King County executive Dow Constantine just announced he's adopting an interim policy banning non-commercial advertising on buses, including the controversial ads proposed by the Mideast Awareness Campaign accusing Israel of "war crimes" and two response ads, one accusing Palestinians of war crimes and one comparing them to the Nazis.

“My job is to deliver essential services to the people of King County, including transit service,” Constantine said in a statement. “I have consulted with federal and local law enforcement authorities who have expressed concern, in the context of this international debate, that our public transportation system could be vulnerable to disruption. ...Given the dramatic escalation of debate in the past few days over these proposed ads, and the submission of inflammatory response ads, there is now an unacceptable risk of harm to or disruption of service to our customers should these ads run.”

As we reported earlier this week, banning non-commercial issue ads would cost Metro nearly $500,000 a year.