'Stolen' posters drawing attention to Israeli hostages torn down

In the battle for public opinion on the war, posters have become one of the fronts. Opponents of Israel tear down posters, insult activists and launch a counter-campaign.

Hundreds of flyers posted on the walls of the Union Square subway station carried images of Israeli hostages with bold letters "kidnapped" above the photo and a call to bring them home underneath. "An entire Israeli family," one page read, "an 80-year-old Israeli grandfather" on another. Others showed the faces of teenagers, a young couple or migrants, all of them missing and presumably held by Hamas in Gaza. But some posters were hard to make out.

The walls of New York City subway stations, campus buildings and other public spaces in the city, as well as other cities around the world, were sprinkled with posters this week as part of a grassroots campaign to draw attention to the approximately 200 hostages taken hostage by Hamas in their Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The rapidly spreading initiative has become an outlet for foreign supporters of Israel who feel frustrated by their inability to help in the war effort and isolated by their remote location from the fighting. But the posters have also become one front in the battle for public opinion on the war. Opponents of Israel tear down posters, insult activists and launch a counter-campaign to draw attention to Palestinian casualties.