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‘Kidnapped’ posters calling attention to Israeli hostages keep getting torn down
(New York Jewish Week) — The hundreds of flyers lining the walls of the Union Square subway station bore the faces of Israeli hostages, with the word “kidnapped” in bold letters above the photo and a plea to bring them home below.
“Entire Israeli family,” one of the pages said; “80-year-old Israeli grandfather,” read another. Others showed the faces of teenagers, a young couple or migrant workers, all missing and believed to be held by Hamas in Gaza.
But some of the posters were also hard to make out. Within minutes or hours of going up, many of them had been partially ripped off the subway station’s walls, tears obscuring the victims’ faces or details about their lives, while others were defaced with marker or surrounded by messages such as “Free Palestine.” Others were removed because of city regulations.
This week, the walls of New York City’s subway stations, campus buildings and other public spaces — along with those of other cities across the globe — have been plastered with the posters, a grassroots campaign to raise awareness of the roughly 200 hostages Hamas captured in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The fast-spreading initiative has given an outlet to supporters of Israel abroad who feel frustrated by their inability to aid the war effort, and isolated by their distance from the fighting.
But the posters have also become one more front in the battle for public opinion on the war — with opponents of Israel tearing down the posters, berating the activists and launching a counter-campaign highlighting Palestinian losses.
“We wanted to put the message out there. We wanted the world to know,” said one of the creators of the “Kidnapped From Israel” project, an Israeli street artist who goes by the nom de plume Dede Bandaid. “Every place they will tear them down, we will put up many, many more.”
An Israeli activist prepares to put up posters near New York City’s Union Square subway station, October 16, 2023. (Luke Tress)
Bandaid and his partner, Israeli artist Nitzan Mintz, were in New York on a three-month art residency when the war broke out. Within a day of Hamas’ attack, they decided to put their skills as street artists to use by designing and printing out the flyers. Initially, they printed 2,000 posters, taped them up around the city, and tried to enlist the help of passersby, most of whom dismissed the project.
“We felt that people don’t want to know the stories and it made us very sad,” Bandaid said. “We got home and we were very broken and we thought, ‘There’s no chance to make this project work.’”
They then posted a DropBox folder with the fliers on social media and collapsed into sleep. “When we woke up in the morning, our phones were just filled with photos and videos from people sharing what they were doing,” Bandaid said. “The whole city was filled with posters.”
The project spread online, overwhelming their DropBox capacity, so they set up a website where anyone could download the images, and began receiving requests for translations from abroad. There are now posters in more than a dozen languages, including Greek, Romanian, Finnish and Indonesian, and campaigners dispersing the posters in far-flung locations such as Paris, New Zealand and Prague. Bandaid estimates that around 1,000 activists took up the initiative in Berlin.
Celebrities including Gal Gadot have gotten on board, posting the images on social media, while other campaigners have adapted the flyers and projected them onto the sides of buildings, put them on billboards or on digital truck displays in New York City and elsewhere. WhatsApp groups created earlier this year by Israeli expatriates to coordinate protests against Israel’s judicial overhaul now feature callouts to put up the posters.
“I feel like for me to start with this campaign, I needed that, not just for my own people but also for myself to feel to be part of a community,” said Israel artist Ronit Levin Delgado, who connected with Mintz through mutual friends in the art world. “For me as an Israeli, with all my family in Israel, that’s the only thing I can do right now because I cannot be there.”
Israeli artist Ronit Levin Delgado in New York City’s Union Square, October 16, 2023. (Luke Tress)
To obtain consent to use the photos, Bandaid and Mintz work with a designer in Israel, Tal Huber, who contacts the families of the hostages to obtain their pictures and identifying details. Around 100 of the 200 hostages are featured on the flyers. Some of the families have reached out to the artists, asking that their loved ones be included in the campaign. Others, after receiving notice that their loved ones were killed, have asked that their photos be removed.
“The idea of being kidnapped, the idea of wanting someone to have his freedom, I think it’s a very strong message and I think many people believe in that,” Bandaid said. “We just lit the match, but everyone took it to their own end.”
Levin Delgado, who lost a friend from the artist community in the massacre of 260 people at an outdoor party, assembled with several dozen other activists, mostly Israelis, at Union Square to post the images in and around the subway station on Monday night. She said the group put up 2,000 posters in four hours, and part of their goal was to interact with passersby, some of whom stopped to ask about the project.
One young woman stopped on her way down to the station platform to ask Levin Delgado about the flyers. “They’re taking everyone, no mercy for anyone. Women, children,” Levin Delgado told her. “We just want to raise awareness and bring them back.”
The woman appeared sympathetic. “I heard about what’s going on, but I wasn’t sure specifically. I didn’t know about the hostages,” she said. “I’ll definitely share it. I’ll take a picture.”
But almost as soon as they went up — in some cases, within minutes — many of the posters were torn down, leaving glue marks and tattered paper on the station walls.
A torn poster about Israeli hostages surrounded by pro-Palestinian messages in New York City’s Union Square, October 16, 2023. (Luke Tress)
Levin Delgado noticed pro-Palestinian activists pasting messages around hostage flyers posted outside the station. The pro-Palestinian posters featured the Palestinian flag, or a photo of a Palestinian captioned with the words “Murdered” and “Stop the oppression.” The posters appeared to be an imitation of the Israeli fliers.
In some cases, someone had written “Free Palestine” in black marker on the Israeli hostage posters. Other fliers bore the image of a Palestinian-American boy killed in Illinois on Monday.
Levin Delgado confronted the pro-Palestinian activists, concerned they were removing the Israeli posters, and got into a heated exchange about the conflict.
“We have almost 2,000 that got murdered,” Levin Delgado said.
“We have millions over the last many years,” one of the pro-Palestinian activists said, a significant exaggeration of the Palestinian death toll throughout the history of the conflict. The pro-Palestinian activists declined to be interviewed by the New York Jewish Week.
Pro-Palestinian activists put up posters near New York City’s Union Square subway station, October 16, 2023. (Luke Tress)
Tensions stayed high, but the two sides finally agreed to leave each other’s posters alone. The verbal sparring continued, however, and minutes later, another passerby tore another Israeli hostage poster down and threatened to punch Levin Delgado when she addressed the incident.
Not all posters were removed for ideological reasons. Some came off subway station walls due to Metropolitan Transportation Authority policy, which bars putting unauthorized signs up on MTA property. An MTA spokesperson said staff remove any posters they see while making their rounds, and added that the fliers were allowed elsewhere. Activists have posted them on street light poles, walls and other public spaces.
Union Square isn’t the only place where the posters have sparked debate. At New York University, just blocks away, the campus group Students Supporting Israel posted photos online of the posters being thrown in the trash, and of people holding bunches of the crumpled, torn posters in their arms.
Ari Axelrod, an American Jewish actor, director and singer, said police had politely removed some of the fliers he helped put up at Columbus Circle on Monday. Axelrod had been leaving the roundabout’s subway station when he came across a group of Israelis and offered to join them. A pro-Palestinian activist then barged into the group and started tearing down the flyers, Axelrod said.
“This guy just comes up and says, ‘Put up all the faces of the Palestinian hostages of the past 75 years,’” Axelrod said. “He kept talking, saying, ‘You’re supporting genocide. You’re supporting ethnic cleansing.’”
The pro-Palestinian activist left the scene to summon police, who told the Israelis that the signs were not allowed on MTA property. One of the Israelis, who had put up the posters, asked that only police or MTA officers remove the flyers so they would not be “desecrated” by others.
“The cops were very understanding. ‘We get why you’re doing it, we understand, but it has to come down,’” Axelrod said, quoting the police. “The police said, ‘We’ll stand guard, we’ll leave it up for a little bit and make sure nobody else takes it down.’”
Axelrod said he watched the police as they surveyed the posters, reading the names and looking at the pictures.
“One of the police officers says, ‘Four years old. Jesus,’” before he started removing the posters, Axelrod said.
The group of Israelis headed back up to the sidewalk, where the person who had directed the effort to hang the posters broke down in tears.
Back downtown, after clashing with rival activists, some of the Israelis kept hanging the posters. Levin Delgado, still toting a bag of flyers and glue, made a last lap around Union Square to check how many remained on the wall. At a staircase down to the subway, she was elated to find a row of posters nearly intact, but then noticed two freshly-drawn swastikas on the opposite white tile wall. She sprayed the hate symbols with glue and pasted an image of a kidnapped Israeli family on top.
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Jewish Woman Wearing Israeli Flag Attacked in Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo: Furya via Wikimedia Commons.
A Jewish woman wearing an Israeli flag was almost “lynched” in an antisemitic attack in Copenhagen, Denmark, last week.
According to the Danish newspaper BT, the 39-year-old woman was riding her scooter through the Christiania neighborhood in the Danish capital on Friday night, wearing an Israeli flag, when a man dressed in black approached her and asked her if she was Jewish.
After the victim said yes, the assailant reportedly asked, “Are you proud of that?” and then called her a “child murderer,” she told BT.
While she was calling the police, another man appeared and told her to throw away her Israeli flag.
“Before I could even get answers from the police, things escalated further,” the woman said. “Suddenly, a group of men rushed towards me.”
“A strong man with a Middle Eastern appearance shouted at me to take off the flag immediately,” she recalled.
When she refused to throw away her flag, the group of men started tearing it apart. According to her testimony, there were at least 50 bystanders who watched the attack without intervening.
“When I screamed for help, one of the men smiled mockingly and said, ‘Nobody will help you here.’ Then he grabbed me by the throat and started choking me with his hands,” the woman recounted.
“One of them pulled the flag over my head so I couldn’t see what was happening. I kept shouting for help, but no one intervened,” she continued. “Then they started dragging me off the asphalt.”
The woman also said one of the assailants cut off her jacket with a knife. When she tried to call the police again, the group of men allegedly began taunting her and calling her a “Jewish whore.”
“When I finally got through to the police, the policeman didn’t ask if I was OK,” she said. “Instead, he asked me why I was carrying an Israeli flag in an area like Christiania. I felt completely abandoned.”
“I had to beg and convince him that I was in extreme danger,” she continued. “Finally, he agreed to send two female officers.”
Local police confirmed they have opened an investigation into the antisemitic attack after receiving a report about the incident.
According to BT, the victim was left with scratches and bruises on her body after being discharged from the hospital.
In an interview with Israel Hayom, the woman said she usually displays her Jewishness, hanging an Israeli flag on her balcony and wearing her Star of David at work as a nurse.
“The patients notice it immediately; sometimes I see their faces contort. But this is my identity, and I don’t intend to hide it,” she said.
However, the woman recently noticed a much more hostile reaction to her displays of Jewishness in her daily routine.
“People look at me differently,” she told Israel Hayom. “A week ago, someone called me a ‘Zionist s–t.’ Others refused to talk to me because I’m Jewish. I could live with that — as long as it didn’t turn into physical violence.”
She said this was her first experience of such violence.
“They broke my phone and tried to tear up the flag. I almost got lynched,” she recalled. “I was afraid they would burn it, so I held on to it with all my strength.”
“They shouted ‘Free Palestine’ at me … It was so humiliating.”
Mikkel Bjørn, a member of the Danish Parliament for the Danish People’s Party, condemned the attack in a post on X.
“A Jewish woman is brutally attacked in Christiania by a group of men with a Middle Eastern background. Spit on, called a ‘child murderer,’ choked and dragged along the ground while 50 people watched and laughed. No one helps. Is this the import of hatred we want to accept in Denmark?” Bjorn wrote.
En jødisk kvinde overfaldes brutalt på Christiania af en gruppe mænd med mellemøstlig baggrund. Spyttet på, kaldt “barnemorder”, kvæles og slæbes hen ad jorden, mens 50 ser på og griner. Ingen hjælper. Er det denne import af had, vi vil acceptere i Danmark? #dkpol #dkmedier pic.twitter.com/d12ekbyGiJ
— Mikkel Bjørn (@Mikkel_Bjorn) March 11, 2025
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Iran, China, Russia Call for End to ‘Unlawful Sanctions’ Amid Tensions With US Over Tehran’s Nuclear Program
From left to right: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi pose for a photo as they meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025, in Beijing, China. Photo: Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS
China and Russia have called for an end to the “unlawful sanctions” imposed on Iran, as the three nations expand their cooperation amid growing Western pressure over Tehran’s nuclear program.
During a meeting in Beijing on Friday, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov discussed areas of cooperation and the Iranian nuclear program, expressing solidarity over a range of issues.
In a joint statement, the three countries emphasized the “necessity of terminating all unlawful unilateral sanctions,” seemingly referring to US and other Western economic penalties imposed on Iran’s imports and exports as an attempt to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
They called on all “relevant parties to refrain from taking any action that would escalate the situation” and undermine diplomatic efforts, stating that dialogue based on “mutual respect” is the only viable option.
The countries also “emphasized that the relevant parties should be committed to addressing the root causes of the current situation and abandoning sanction, pressure, or threat of force,” calling such actions “unacceptable” and highlighting the risks of regional escalation and environmental disaster.
In their statement, Russia and China praised Iran’s purported commitment to comply with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Safeguards Agreement to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
After their meeting, Beijing and Moscow emphasized that Tehran’s right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy should be “fully” respected.
“The Iranian side has never said a single word about intending to obtain nuclear weapons,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a separate statement. “In this respect, of course, all sanctions and restrictions are, in our view, illegal.”
“We believe that our Iranian friends have the right to develop a peaceful nuclear energy industry in their country,” he continued. “Russia is actively involved in this and is assisting our Iranian friends in this regard.”
On Thursday, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, accused Western countries of spreading false information about Tehran’s nuclear program to impose “illegal sanctions” that have deprived Iran of essential medical supplies and restricted its exports.
“Despite these facts, certain Western countries, particularly the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, have persistently sought to create a false narrative about Iran’s nuclear activities, alleging non-cooperation [with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog] and military ambitions,” Iravani said.
In their joint statement, Iranian, Chinese, and Russian officials also announced they achieved “very important and valuable agreements regarding the development of trilateral cooperation on significant international issues, including the necessity for the three countries to work together to counter US unilateral and bullying sanctions.”
Friday’s meeting came after Iran, China, and Russia on Wednesday concluded three days of joint naval drills in Iranian territorial waters in the Gulf of Oman, bolstering defense cooperation. Experts told The Algemeiner this week that expanding military cooperation between the three countries presents a rising threat to the US and its allies in the Middle East, especially Israel.
Both Beijing and Moscow have had deep interests in Tehran as a partner in the Middle East. China has continued to purchase Iranian crude oil despite Western sanctions and remains one of the top markets for Iranian imports. Meanwhile, Russia has relied on Iran for the supply of bomb-carrying drones used in its war on Ukraine.
Iran’s growing ties with China and Russia come at a time when Tehran is facing increasing sanctions by the United States, particularly on its oil industry, as part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at cutting the country’s crude exports to zero and preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Even though Tehran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon, the IAEA has warned that Iran is “dramatically” accelerating uranium enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level.
Tehran has repeatedly claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than weapon development.
However, Western states have said there is no “credible civilian justification” for the country’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
Last week, Iran’s so-called “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tehran will not be bullied into negotiations after US President Donald Trump revealed he had sent a letter to the country’s top authority to negotiate a nuclear deal.
Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected the possibility of nuclear talks with Washington.
“There will be no possibility of direct talks between us and the United States on the nuclear issue as long as the maximum pressure is applied in this way,” Araghchi said during a joint press conference with his visiting Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
Iran and Russia, which recently signed a pact to deepen their defense ties, have been working on an initiative to form an international alliance against US sanctions.
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Elise Stefanik Blasts UN for ‘Antisemitic’ Report Accusing Israel of Sexual Violence in Gaza
United Nations Ambassador-designate Elise Stefanik spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the next American ambassador to the United Nations has repudiated a new UN-backed report accusing the Israel Defense Force (IDF) of perpetrating sexual violence against Palestinians in Gaza, lambasting its claims as “antisemitic” and baseless.
“The corrupt UN Human Rights Council’s new baseless report is antisemitic and anti-Israel slander,” US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) posted on social media on Thursday, when the report was published. “The so-called ‘Human Rights Council’ [UNHRC] has failed to condemn the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israel including the brutal slaughter, torture, kidnapping of thousands of innocent civilians, and Hamas’s horrific use of rape and sexual violence against Israeli women and girls, yet disgracefully attacks Israel with unfounded smears.”
Stefanik continued, “This report exposes the disgraceful and obsessive antisemitism of UNHRC and reaffirms why President Trump took the strong, correct decisive executive action to withdraw from it.”
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Thursday published a report, commissioned by the Human Rights Council, that accused Israel of committing “genocidal acts” and employing sexual violence in Gaza. The report alleged that Israeli military forces have used sexual abuse and forcible stripping as weapons of war against Palestinian civilians.
“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” the report said.
Upon the report’s release, Israel’s permanent mission to the UN released a statement rejecting the allegations, arguing that they lacked substantiation and were based on uncorroborated sources.
“In a shameless attempt to incriminate the IDF and manufacture the illusion of ‘systematic’ use of [sexual and gender-based violence], the [Commission of Inquiry] deliberately adopts a lower level of corroboration in its report, which allowed it to include information from second-hand single uncorroborated sources,” the mission said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also repudiated the UNHRC, arguing that the “antisemitic” council has launched unsubstantiated allegations against the Jewish state with the goal of tarnishing its reputation.
“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the UN is once again choosing to attack Israel with false accusations, including unfounded accusations of sexual violence,” Netanyahu wrote.
In contrast, Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza, said that the report confirmed Israel’s “genocidal” actions within the enclave.
“The UN’s investigation report on Israel’s genocidal acts against the Palestinian people confirms what has happened on the ground: genocide and violations of all humanitarian and legal standards,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told AFP.
Several investigations have revealed that Hamas-led Palestinians perpetrated widespread sexual violence against Israeli women and girls not only during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel but also later against Israeli hostages kidnapped during the onslaught.
Anne Herzberg, legal adviser and UN representative for NGO Monitor, told The Algemeiner that the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice will likely use the report to bolster their genocide cases against Israel. Other anti-Israel initiatives such as the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS) will also likely reference the report in future activities.
Stefanik was tapped by Trump to serve as the ambassador to the United Nations for the current administration. However, Stefanik has not yet been confirmed by the US Senate to serve in the post. Senate Republicans are reportedly slowing her confirmation process due to concerns over the narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives, where her vote is seen as necessary to pass key legislation.
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