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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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Amid Rising Antisemitism, American Jews Make Aliyah to Israel Seeking Safety, Community, Impact
Olim gather at JFK Airport in New York, preparing to board Nefesh B’Nefesh’s 65th charter flight to Israel. Photo: The Algemeiner
NEW YORK/TEL AVIV — Confronted with rising antisemitism and unease in the United States, a growing number of American Jews are choosing to make aliyah, embracing the risks of war in the Middle East for the chance to build new lives and foster meaningful communities.
On Wednesday, 225 new olim arrived in Tel Aviv on the first charter aliyah flight since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Aliyah refers to the process of Jews immigrating to Israel, and olim refers to those who make this journey.
Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN) — a nonprofit that promotes and facilitates aliyah from the US and Canada — brought its 65th charter flight from New York, which The Algemeiner joined.
Founded in 2002, NBN helps olim become fully integrated members of Israeli society, simplifying the aliyah process and providing essential resources and guidance.
In partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth, and the Jewish National Fund, NBN has helped nearly 100,000 olim build thriving new lives in Israel.
Shawn Fink is one of the 225 people who embarked on the life-changing journey earlier this week, leaving Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife, Liz, and their son.
For Fink and his family, making aliyah was driven not only by their love for Israel and desire to build a new community, but also by the escalating threats and uncertainties facing Jewish communities abroad since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
“Mostly, we were frustrated with the direction the United States is taking, and the rise in antisemitism was a major concern for us,” Fink told The Algemeiner.
Like many countries around the world, the US has seen an alarming rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment since the Oct. 7 atrocities.
According to the latest data issued by the FBI, hate crimes perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the federal agency’s counting them.
A striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, who constitute just 2 percent of the US population, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
Fink explained that the increasing costs of living a Jewish life in the US — from education to kosher food — weighed heavily on his family’s decision to make the move to Israel.
While they first considered making aliyah five years ago, Fink and his family had to put the plans on hold for personal reasons — returning to the idea only in the past few months when the timing finally worked in their favor.
“We started planning it seriously in November and began the entire process with Nefesh B’Nefesh,” Fink told The Algemeiner. “It’s been a nonstop whirlwind ever since.”
For them, the current war did not stop their plans, but it did influence the cities they explored for their new home.
“The war really reinforced for us the importance of supporting Israel and our community,” Fink said. “By making aliyah, we felt we could do even more to help.”
Even though it is difficult to leave behind family and close friends, they look forward to reconnecting with friends in Israel, making new connections, and building a vibrant new community.
“Making aliyah in less than six months has been a whirlwind. I’d encourage anyone considering it to give themselves at least twice as much time, double the budget, and be prepared for plenty of unexpected starts and stops along the way,” Fink told The Algemeiner.
Nefesh B’Nefesh provides assistance to families throughout their entire aliyah journey, offering guidance before relocating and continued support once in Israel.
The Israeli government also complements these efforts with resources and financial incentives to help newcomers settle and ease their transition into their new lives.
“Once the ticket is finally in your hand and you’re waiting to board the plane, you realize that all the challenges and obstacles along the way were worth it,” Fink said.
Veronica Zaragovia was also one of the 225 olim who joined the flight earlier this week.
Similarly to Fink and his family, Zaragovia decided to make aliyah, driven not just by her love for Israel, but also by the increasing challenges of being Jewish abroad and the hope of making a meaningful impact by serving her community.
From Florida, she embarked on the journey alone, excited for all the new opportunities and possibilities that awaited her in her new home.
“I want to take pride in being Jewish and in Israel — that’s why I’m making aliyah,” she told The Algemeiner, reflecting on the move she has been planning for the past two years.
“It’s a huge concern for me that in some places in the US, I can’t — or maybe shouldn’t — wear my Star of David necklace,” she said. “I don’t feel that Jews can be fully safe anywhere in the country. The rise in antisemitism has been truly shocking and deeply concerning.”
Zaragovia, who worked as a journalist in the US, said her love for storytelling and uncovering the truth played a key role in her decision to make this move.
“After Oct. 7, I felt that the way my colleagues and other journalists were covering Israel was wrong and unfair,” she said.
“As someone whose career is built on facts and truth, I didn’t see that reflected in their reporting. That’s why I decided to make a difference by being there myself,” she continued.
Rather than deterring her decision to make a change, Zaragovia explained that the current war only reinforced it.
“It became clear that I needed to go, be there with my people, and make a difference through my work,” she said. “I couldn’t have done this without Nefesh B’Nefesh. They’ve been incredible, guiding me every step of the way from start to finish.”
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Mike Huckabee, Israeli Government Push Back Against Claims of ‘Famine’ in Gaza
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli government and the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, are pushing back against international criticism after a UN-backed authority declared a famine is taking place in Gaza.
“To the uninformed who claim Israel is starving Gaza, get the facts & read the thread below,” Huckabee said on X on Friday. “Tons of food has gone into Gaza but Hamas savages stole it, ate lots of it to become corpulent, sold it on [the] black market but they didn’t give it to the hostages.”
His comments came hours after the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the global body that monitors hunger crises, reported that famine thresholds had been met in Gaza City and surrounding areas, with more than half a million people already experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger. The IPC warned that the number could rise to 641,000 by the end of September if conditions do not improve.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a post on X, dismissed the IPC’s conclusions as “an outright lie,” insisting Israel “does not have a policy of starvation” but rather “a policy of preventing starvation.” Israeli officials note that thousands of aid trucks have entered Gaza and blame the ruling Hamas terror group for diverting supplies.
Huckabee’s remarks echoed that position, framing the Islamist group as the central cause of hunger. Israeli leaders and their allies accuse Hamas of stealing food, hoarding aid, and reselling goods on the black market at inflated prices instead of distributing them to civilians or releasing Israeli hostages.
The United States and Israel set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) earlier this year to coordinate aid deliveries outside of UN channels, after accusing Hamas of exploiting international assistance. The group says it delivers more than a million meals a day, but humanitarian organizations counter that the aid falls far short of what is needed.
Distribution sites have often descended into chaos, with starving crowds surging around convoys. Human rights groups have described the alleged famine as a “man-made catastrophe” and accused Israel of weaponizing hunger.
Israel recently increased the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza, after imposing a temporary embargo in an effort to keep them out of the hands of Hamas. While facilitating the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, Israeli officials have condemned the UN and other international aid agencies for their alleged failure to distribute supplies, noting much of the humanitarian assistance has been stalled at border crossings or stolen. According to UN data, the vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients.
Last week, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) released a report saying that Hamas has been inflating the death toll of Palestinians due to malnutrition and that most of those verified to have died had preexisting medical conditions.
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Italian Hospital Staff Discard Israeli-Made Medicine as Concerns Mount Globally of Antisemitism in Health Care
In Italy, Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci throw products of the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical in the garbage in protest against Israel. Photo: Screenshot
Two medical workers in Italy filmed themselves discarding Israeli-made medicine in protest against the Jewish state at their workplace, fueling global concerns of antisemitism in health-care facilities as a doctor in the United Kingdom who praised Adolf Hitler was allowed back to work this month.
A doctor and a nurse who work at a community hospital in Pratovecchio Stia, near Arezzo in Tuscany, recently posted on social media a video of themselves dramatically throwing away products from Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli company.
Italy
Throwing Israeli drugs in the binAt the Casa della Salute in Pratovecchio Stia, two public employees – Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci – film themselves throwing away drugs manufactured by TEVA.pic.twitter.com/nQhc3TIQT3
— Hamas Atrocities (@HamasAtrocities) August 20, 2025
Dr. Daniel Radzik, a senior member of the Italian Jewish Medical Association, told Ynetnews that his organization is “very concerned about the event.”
“It’s evident that this act was not accidental, but carried out with the intention of encouraging the boycott of medicines produced in Israel,” he added.
Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci apologized for the video following backlash, saying, “We apologize to anyone offended by the video. It was a symbolic gesture for peace. We did not actually throw away any medicine.”
In Italy, Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci throw products of the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical in the garbage in protest of Israel. Photo: Screenshot
However, the Italian Jewish Medical Association was skeptical of the apology.
“They tried to explain in a very naive way. Because they say that their act was only symbolic, made for peace and that the medicine was only integrator and they don’t want really to throw them to the rubbish,” Radzik said.
The doctor and nurse claimed the items were not medications purchased by the hospital, but rather items such as wet wipes that are given out for free, and that they removed them from the trash after filming. Additionally, they claimed the video was filmed after working hours.
Meanwhile, a doctor in the UK was allowed to return to work this month after praising Hitler during an antisemitic rant and making racist comments about a colleague.
“All this antisemitism … if Hitler was around today, I would support him as he got rid of horrible f—kers like him,” Dr. Mili Shah said in reference to a colleague in 2021, according to British media.
In response, Shah was reportedly suspended for four months. However, a review by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in July concluded Shah, who is no longer employed by NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group, is fit to return to work.
These recent incidents come as concerns mount globally over antisemitism in health-care spaces, with Jews feeling unsafe due to medical professionals expressing antisemitism or even outright death threats against Israelis.
In the UK, for example, the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH Trust) issued an apology this past week following a patient’s complaints about the placement of anti-Israel posters at a facility. These posters — which read “Zionism is Poison,” called for a “Free Palestine,” and accused Israel of wantonly starving and killing Palestinians — led a patient to reach out to the group UK Lawyers for Israel, expressing fear of receiving subpar treatment if the hospital staff discovered she was Jewish. The chief executive of UCLH Trust released a statement apologizing for the posters.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident, midwife Fatimah Mohamied, who resigned from her position after UKLFI highlighted her anti-Israel social media posts, has now filed a claim against Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, alleging a violation of her rights. Mohamied’s posts included her defending and celebrating the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and massacre across southern Israel.
Other Western countries have seen health-care providers’ antipathy toward Israel manifest as violent threats.
In the Netherlands, police opened an investigation into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.
Although Sa’id denied making the comments, claiming someone was “pretending to be me,” an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people last year, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”
The nurse’s alleged threat mirrors a similar incident in Australia, in which video showed two nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements. The widely circulated footage showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” Shira Nussdorf, a US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago, told The Algemeiner earlier this year when the video first emerged. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.
The issue of antisemitism in medical facilities also extends to North America.
A December 2024 study by the Data & Analytics Department of StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group, found that 40 percent of 645 Jewish American health-care professionals surveyed reported experiencing antisemitism in the workplace. A similar study of Canadian Jewish health workers conducted last year reached 80 percent.