The visual poet and the graffiti artist never expected to set off a global phenomenon and then a furious backlash.
Nitzan Mintz and her partner, Dede Bandaid, launched the now ubiquitous red and white posters of Israelis abducted by Hamas – each one with a photograph and the age of the disappeared under the banner “KIDNAPPED” – a couple of days after the 7 October attack in an attempt to ensure that the 200-plus hostages were not forgotten in the looming war in Gaza.
But after posting a few hundred flyers around New York, the couple was taken aback at how swiftly the posters became plastered across cities from the US to Argentina, to the UK and around Europe. The faces of grandmothers, three-year-old twins, young men and women, and entire families with small children, stare out from Manhattan lampposts, London telephone boxes and railings at Sydney’s Bondi beach.
Then came the firestorm.
The posters quickly became embroiled in the interminable battle over narrative in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Alongside thousands of people taking the initiative to print out their own posters, pro-Israel groups helped flood cities with the flyers. With that has come accusations that, whatever the original intent, the posters are part of a propaganda push to justify Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Mintz and Bandaid were far from home, starting an artists’ residency programme in New York, when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October killing more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
“My aunt called me and told me never to return to Israel, because Israel is going to be destroyed and I will not have a home to return to,” said Mintz.
Bandaid said they felt helpless, stuck in a foreign city as word came in of friends and family caught up in the attack.
“We were in complete shock. The same day we knew, we have to do something. We came up with this poster idea based on missing people advertisements that used to be on milk cartons,” he said.
The pair enlisted a fellow artist in Israel, Tal Huber, to design the poster, which includes the statement: “More than 8,500 women, men, and children, ranging in age from 3 months to 85 years old, were wounded, murdered, beaten, raped, and brutally separated from loved ones by Hamas.”
They took the flyer to a print shop, ran off 2,000 copies, and then started walking.
“It was such a heavy box,” said Bandaid. “We dragged it all the way from Central Park to lower Manhattan, crossing every neighbourhood, trying to reach as many streets as we can to put the posters on streetlight poles and subway stations.”
The posters did not receive the reaction the pair hoped for. They tried handing them out to passersby but were brushed off by New Yorkers not interested in yet another flyer.
Mintz said some people claimed the kidnapped Israelis had already been killed and there was no point in putting up posters.
“One woman even said to us: ‘I don’t know these people. Why on earth would I take those posters with me and put them up?’ It was so cruel. I was crying and putting up posters. It was one of the worst days of my life,” she said.
“We arrived back home devastated. We felt so alone, like we were the only people that cared. People refused to help us and showed no empathy.”
In frustration, the pair uploaded the posters to an online folder, spread it around their social media sites with a message encouraging people to download and print them, and went to bed.
“The day after, we discovered our post became viral,” said Mintz. “Overnight people started sharing it. It was a huge surprise. We took a walk in Manhattan and we saw tons of posters that came out of nowhere. Since then it’s like fire all over the world. A lot people feel exactly like us. They are isolated from home. They don’t know what to do and how to help our country. We all have friends that are there in Gaza right now.”
For some in New York, the posters echoed the flyers of missing people that plastered lower Manhattan after September 11. The “kidnapped” posters, now in 36 languages, have been widely promoted on social media, including by actors such as Jack Black and the comedian Amy Schumer.
As the posters proliferated, blanketing some neighbourhoods, a backlash gathered momentum. In one of scores of videos of people removing the flyers, a woman putting posters on a bridge confronts a woman who has torn them down.
“You’re promoting Zionism,” said the woman carrying crumpled-up posters.
The other women responded: “I am promoting Zionism. I am a Zionist.”
Which drew the response: “So you basically think genocide against Palestinians is justified?”
In Brooklyn, a man was arrested in an altercation with people attempting to shield posters amid much swearing. In other videos, a group of New York construction workers confronted a man attempting to remove posters while a Broadway theatre producer was also caught on film taking down the flyers. In another, someone pasted the word “occupier” over “kidnapped”.
Mintz was shocked.
“One obvious reason is pure antisemitism. People don’t like us, and they don’t really care about Jewish lives, or specifically Israeli lives. The other reason is that people think it’s fake, that the people on the posters are not real. I hear them say it all the time,” she said.
“They have no idea how wrong they are, and how hurtful it is for our people to hear them even say it, because it’s real people. It’s just insane and it’s very cruel.”
Mintz said she had also heard people disparage the posters as “propaganda directed to hurt Palestinians, and to tilt the conversation until the view of the world politically against Palestinians”.
The artists insist they have no political motive beyond keeping a focus on the hostages. But that is not how others see it.
An NYU student filmed ripping down posters, Yazmeen Deyhimi, apologised but said in a statement issued by a spokesperson that her actions were prompted by Israel killing civilians in Gaza, and that there were no posters of Palestinian victims.
“Her frustration was that innocent children, teens, adults and elderly were also being killed, who are also Palestinians who are NOT Hamas. Many Palestinians have no association with Hamas. She was frustrated both sides, Israeli and Palestinians, were not represented on the posters,” the statement said.
While pro-Palestinian groups are mostly reluctant to comment publicly on the removal of the posters, an organiser in one group, who asked not to be named, said that whatever their origins, the flyers have now become part of a pro-Israel propaganda drive to justify the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
“There’s a feeling that it’s always Israeli victims who are foregrounded. I don’t think people should be tearing the posters down, and I do think they are real people who have been abducted by Hamas. It’s tragic. But I think it’s a reflection of a long-held anger at the sense only Jewish lives matter, only Israeli deaths count and get attention,” she said.
“Palestinians are killed all the time by the Israeli army and settlers, and their deaths aren’t even registered in the press. Even now, with 10,000 dead in Gaza – more than 4,000 of them children – the focus is still only on these Israelis. We’re even told the dead children are terrorists.”
Victoria Ruiz resigned as a New York county public defender after she was filmed taking down a poster. Ruiz does not respond in the video to being asked repeatedly: “Why are you taking down pictures of missing children?”
However, in a statement to her former colleagues after she was forced out her job, Ruiz said the posters were being used as a deliberate provocation by a hardline pro-Israel group, StopAntisemitism, at an event to remember thousands of Palestinians killed over the past month.
“As the vigil was going on and people were reading names of those who have died, a group of agitators arrived and began heckling those of us there mourning. The person who took the video of me was among this group. The group began putting up posters around the vigil,” she said.
“I saw that one of the posters contained handwritten statements justifying the bombing of Palestinians – the same deaths we were there to mourn. I was deeply offended by the statements on the poster, and went over to take that poster down. At that point, the individual from the group approached me and started recording the video, verbally misrepresenting on the video what I was doing and what I was taking issue with.”
The videos have also unleashed demands for people identified in them to be fired from their jobs. StopAntisemitism posted a video of a woman shouting at another taking down a poster: “Good luck in your employment.” In another post, the group identifies a couple and who their employers are in an evident attempt to have them dismissed. A Boston-area dental assistant was fired after she was identified in video tearing down a poster.
Pro-Palestinian groups say that some people appear to be targeting mosques and other Muslim or Palestinian sites to post the flyers in large numbers. The director of the Islamic Center of San Diego, Tazheen Nizam, told the San Diego Tribune that he regarded the sudden appearance of the posters outside his mosque as intimidation.
“These actions create a sense of fear and concern amongst mosque attendees and the neighbouring community,” he said “Especially at a time of heightened sensitivity, an action like this sends a clear message of instilling hate and fear.”
Rafael Shimunov, a prominent Jewish peace activist, filmed a couple of dozen posters in front of a well-known Palestinian restaurant in Brooklyn.
“The people who posted these posters skipped the entire neighbourhood and found the one Palestine restaurant,” he said. “These posters are being used to target Palestinians in our community.”
Shimunov criticised the removal of the posters, but said that if the concern is for the safety of innocent people, then they should also include posters of missing Palestinians.
Mintz and Bandaid say that the sensation of their campaign is down to the embrace by thousands of ordinary Americans and Europeans. Mintz is disturbed at the claim the posters could be seen as anti-Palestinian.
“Where does it say in the posters that we are against Palestinians? It’s absolutely not what we are trying to do. We have nothing against Palestinians. The opposite,” she said.
“We are a pure campaign based on volunteers that do it from their heart, just to spread awareness. We’re scared and afraid and worried and want our people back. It’s our money paying for this, not the government. We have nothing to say about anything else other than we want them back. We are not politicians. We are the little people here.”
