How posters of Hamas hostages became targets in the war for public opinion in NY
Documentary film ‘TORN’ examines the emotional toll and legal aspects of anti-Israel activists’ oft-violent ripping down and destroying of ‘KIDNAPPED’ notices
Renee Ghert-Zand is the health reporter and a feature writer for The Times of Israel.
As war broke out between Israel and Hamas after the terror group invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, another conflict began to rage in the streets of New York and other cities around the world.
It was a war whose primary weapon was “KIDNAPPED” posters highlighting the plight of the 251 people taken hostage from Israel to Gaza by Hamas and other terror groups, as another 1,200 were brutally murdered. No sooner did pro-Israel and Jewish individuals and groups hang the posters in public spaces than anti-Israel demonstrators would either deface them or rip them down.
This battle, lasting several months after October 7, is chronicled and analyzed in a new film, “TORN: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets” by Nim Shapira. The film has been shown on Israeli television and at film festivals and special screenings. More US and international screenings are lined up for 2025.
In early October 2023, Israeli-born, Brooklyn-based creative director and filmmaker Shapira was in Tel Aviv. After Hamas attacked southern Israel, he stayed another month and a half to volunteer, using his communications skills and professional connections to get the truth out to global audiences about the Hamas atrocities.
“I saw on my social media feeds that colleagues, friends, and fellow artists in the US and other countries were justifying October 7. These people said that what I was posting was false. Some even said the hostages were not real, that they were actors,” Shapira told The Times of Israel.
Before heading back home to Brooklyn, Shapira, 42, saw videos posted on social media of people in New York ripping down the KIDNAPPED posters featuring the photos, names, ages, and nationalities of the hostages.
“It was in my old neighborhood of Williamsburg. I was like, what is happening here? These are the streets I walk in. This is my backyard. This was very upsetting to see,” Shapira said.
Soon after he returned, 105 Israeli and foreign national hostages were released between November 24 and November 30. Subsequently, the poster war cooled down, and the public’s attention turned elsewhere. However, Shapira was determined to look deeply into why those New Yorkers “without skin the game,” as he put it, had such furious and violent reactions to posters that had aimed to give a face and voice to the hostages. He also wanted to investigate how this vitriol affected American Jews and US-based Israelis.
“TORN” is a weaving of news footage of the October 7 atrocities, the progress of the war, and the November hostage release, along with videos shared on social media, interviews, and reenactments.
Early in the film, viewers are introduced to Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid, Israeli artists doing a fellowship in New York. Devastated by the Hamas massacres and abductions, they felt compelled to do something. With a colleague’s help, they designed the KIDNAPPED posters, printed 2,000 copies, and went into the streets to hand them out and tape them to lampposts. For the most part, passersby showed little interest or sympathy.
Nonetheless, the posters quickly went viral among those who did care. They were copied and translated into different languages in several cities worldwide. Israel, of course, had its versions.
Shining a spotlight from afar
Interviews with Liam Zeitchik and his sister Alana Zeitchik, cousins of six hostages from the Cunio and Aloni families, provide a glimpse into what it was like to try from far away to bring attention to the plight of loved ones — only to have people claim that the posters are Israeli propaganda aimed at erroneously portraying “genocidal” Israelis as victims and encouraging US military support for Israel. (Danielle Aloni, her daughter Emilia, and Sharon Aloni Cunio and her twins Yuli and Emma were released in November 2023. Aloni Cunio’s husband David Cunio is still held captive.)
“I don’t feel angered by anyone sharing and expressing their solidarity with the Palestinian people, with the people of Gaza, at all. I just wish there was more space for us, as well,” Alana Zeitchik said in the film.
“They dismiss us. They dismissed us for a cause they feel more passionately about, they feel is more worthy — instead of being able to hold space for both peoples’ grief,” she said.
College student Julia Simon is a friend of US-born Omer Neutra, an IDF tank commander and “lone soldier” killed on October 7 whose body was abducted to Gaza. At the time of ” TORN ” filming, Neutra was believed to be alive. A lone soldier is a conscript who doesn’t have family nearby.
“I think the posters did a really great job of showing who people are, the world we live in, and who is really there [and not] for us. I think these posters kind of threw a stone, and the ripples woke us up,” Simon said.
The film raises many important questions and issues about the political climate in the US and other Western countries today and about free speech.
Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, executive director of the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at New York University, emphasized that in a world in which so many perceive things in only metaphorical black or white, “seeing these faces [on the hostage posters] is the ultimate challenge to that binary view.”
Israeli-American jeweler Chen Levy’s story highlights many matters, including the right to display what one wants on private property. She eventually stopped putting up hostage posters after angry mobs of pro-Palestinian protesters repeatedly tore them down from pillars outside her shop. Her attempts to engage with the protesters failed, leaving her to fear for her safety and barricade herself and her employees inside.
An act of free speech
As ugly as it is for someone to deface or tear down a hostage poster, it is an act of free speech, according to Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“The act of putting up a poster is an act of expressing a viewpoint. When someone else comes along and rips that poster down, that’s akin to a heckler’s veto. It’s people deciding what others are able to see and what speech and views they’re able to listen to,” Terr said.
Shapira included footage showing how some refused to let “hecklers” win. As soon as they noticed posters missing from a long subway entrance wall, they put them right back up.
Terr noted that it was possible that not all those hanging the hostage posters did so as a way of dealing with October 7-related trauma or bringing awareness to the hostages’ situation.
“It may be that in some cases, people are putting up posters with the intention of causing anger in others. But that is all part of the debate. That may be worthy of criticism. People may say that by doing this, you are not helping bridge the divide between the different sides of this conflict,” Terr said.
“But the people doing it at the same time may argue that this is the way that I think is most effective in expressing my views, and I want to put these posters up so that people who disagree with me will see them. Maybe they are not doing it in the most productive way, but that is all part of the debate allowed in this country under the First Amendment,” he said.
Just as the ripping down of posters created a climate of fear and self-censorship, so did the “doxxing” or “canceling” of people who did the ripping down. “TORN” includes clips uploaded to social media identifying individuals removing the posters. In some cases, this resulted in them being threatened, suspended from university, or fired from jobs.
Blatantly missing from “TORN” are interviews with people who have removed or destroyed hostage posters. Shapira said he reached out to many people who had been doxxed, but they all refused to be interviewed or appear in the film. As a workaround, Shapira compiled publicly available statements from individuals who suffered consequences from doxxing and had writer Nina Mogilnik, an active posterer, respond to them.
“I think taking down a poster in and of itself should not be a fireable offense. I think it reduces the space for people to express themselves. But I do think there were instances where people should have been fired — people who expressed heinous, violent, hateful views,” Mogilnik said.
Mogilnik noted that although the posters helped to raise awareness, she wasn’t sure they ultimately translated into lifesaving intervention for the hostages.
All these months later, 100 hostages (alive and dead) remain in Gaza, and barely any KIDNAPPED posters remain intact on the streets in New York.
“They are not like the pyramids. They wash away with the rain,” Shapira said.
For this reason, it is moving to see in the film that activist Elisha Fine has devotedly collected the remnants of slashed, burned, spray-painted, graffitied, and even feces-defaced hostage posters.
“There is a certain kedusha (holiness) to these posters,” he said.
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