November 1, 2023

JEFF JACOBY: Why they rip down the ‘Kidnapped from Israel’ fliers.

The posters were the brainchild of two Israeli artists, Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid, who were visiting New York when Hamas carried out its bloodbath. Aching to help in some way, they drew on their art backgrounds to design the eye-catching fliers. Each is topped with the word “KIDNAPPED” in large white letters on an orange background; below that heading is the name, age, nationality, and photo of one of the hostages, who range in age from 3 months to 85 years.

The posters went viral overnight. Within days they were appearing everywhere, a powerful symbol of Israel’s anguish and of the desperate yearning for the captives’ safe return. Then came the backlash. “Within minutes or hours of going up,” reported the New York Jewish Week, “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.” On a poster of two of the youngest hostages, 3-year-old twins Emma and Yuli Cunio, Hitler mustaches were drawn on the girls’ faces. On other posters, the words “Lies” or “Actors” were scrawled.

Those ripping down or damaging the signs are by no means abashed about doing so. Some have filmed themselves attacking the fliers and posted the video online. Others, when asked why they were trashing the pictures of civilian hostages, have yelled about “genocide,” declared their support for “Palestinian civilians,” claimed the fliers contained “inaccurate information,” or simply cursed out the person filming them.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is intensely controversial and generates great emotion on both sides. But these assaults on the “Kidnapped” posters have nothing to do with the merits of the dispute. The sole purpose of the fliers is to emphasize the humanity of the innocent hostages seized by Hamas (many of whom, as it happens, were peace activists deeply committed to Arab-Israeli coexistence). What drives the people ripping down the posters or adding Hitler mustaches to the pictures is a pathological need to deny the humanity of those kidnapped Jews.

A core principle of antisemites in all times and places is that Jews are not fully human and are never innocent. A thousand years ago, Jews were slaughtered by Crusaders for being satanic Christ-killers who consumed the blood of children; a century ago Hitler preached that they were subhumans who polluted the racial purity of Aryan Europe. Today the Jewish state is accused of committing the demonic crimes of genocide and apartheid. The poison never changes, only the vial it comes in.

The “Kidnapped” fliers are intolerable to the haters because they so urgently challenge the antisemitic paradigm. They make it vividly clear that in the war between barbarism and civilization, between oppressor and oppressed, it is Jews who are under attack. That infuriates those whose worldview revolves around the certainty that Israel and its supporters are the victimizers. The outpouring of sympathy for Jews kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists — and the moral force of that sympathy — is anathema to them.

In response, the left is blaming the posters for triggering anti-Semites. The Daily Dot asks: ‘Like a trap:’ Are posters of Israeli hostages drawing awareness or baiting pro-Palestinians into getting canceled when they tear them down?

The Gray Lady similarly explores:

Posted at 6:51 pm by Ed Driscoll