A Documentary About NYC’s Battle Over Hostage Posters Ripped at My Heart

I have a penchant for documentaries and news stories dealing with antisemitism and Jewish controversies.

I was eager to watch the recent documentary Torn by director Nim Shapira. Fortunately, I was able to watch it online; I prefer to ruminate on such serious and disturbing content alone.

The film represents both sides of the hostage poster battle that took place in New York following Hamas’ October 7, 2003, attack on Southern Israel, which killed 1,200 men, women and children. The director obviously tried to give everyone an equal opportunity to be heard, as he proved by allowing one of the interviewees to read messages from protestors who had declined to be interviewed on camera.

There was no preaching, accusations nor defamation from the activist, rabbi, writer or family members of hostages who were interviewed. They simply relayed events and their reactions to them.

Any objectifying, vilifying, slandering, cursing, denigration and vitriol came from the hundreds — maybe thousands — of people who tore down and defaced the hostage posters as they recorded their acts on their cell phones. Those videos speak for themselves.

It is this footage I find particularly sad and disheartening.

Alana Zeitchik, whose cousins were kidnapped, says it best in the film when she explains, “I don’t feel angered by anyone sharing and expressing their solidarity with the Palestinian people, with the people of Gaza at all. I just wish they had more space for us as well. They dismissed us. They dismissed us for a cause they feel more passionately about, that they feel is more worthy, instead of being able to hold space for both people’s grief.”

It was painful for me to watch New Yorkers ravage these beautifully made posters by Israeli street artists Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid and to utter obscenities at the people who asked why they were doing such a thing. Anyone attempting to have a decent conversation, as witnessed in several videos, was sorely disappointed.

Then, to top it all off, we hear many people in the film, including an online streamer and a political commentator, claim that the hostage posters were provocation and propaganda and told a false narrative that only sought to get support for the Israeli government or to rile people up.

These are the posters that friends and family posted of those kidnapped by Hamas. They  were worried sick and wanted to call attention to the horrible fate of these hostages in the hopes that they could gain support. Instead, they are accused of being politically motivated and lying to the American public.

I cried when Julia Simon, a close friend of hostage Omer Neutra, was interviewed along with video clips of them together, because I already knew Omer had been killed and it was a challenge to get his body back. This information was included in a postscript at the very end of the film.

Julia explained how she would read hateful messages on social media and then have to sit next to these same people in class at her university and discuss homework assignments with them.

I felt a sense of solidarity with Chen Levy, an Israeli jewelry designer and store owner who had to witness pro-Palestinian protestors repeatedly take down the posters that were on her property. The situation escalated to a mob banging on her windows and doors. Sadly, there was a lack of police presence to defend her store. Thankfully, she was not harmed but, eventually, for the safety of her employees, she stopped hanging the posters.

Also disturbing was Linda Sarsour’s interview. An organizer of the 2017 Women’s March, she spoke at a pro-Hamas rally outside New York’s Grand Central Station, shouting into a large crowd: “I will remind all of you good people that are here that there are provocateurs all across the city. And what they’re waiting for you to do is waste your energy ripping down their little posters so they can record you and try to get you fired.”

She continued, “So when you go home, they have their little people all over the place, trust me I know them. I got a radar for them. You’ll think they’re ordinary people. Trust me when I tell you they are everywhere. They’re on your college campus. They’re outside the supermarket. They’re outside Grand Central Station.”

If that isn’t antisemitic, I don’t know what is. The irony is that she is quoted in 2024 as saying, “We must stand together united against the targeting, demonization and the vilification of any group of people.”

What this film does well is to highlight the two sides’ polarization in the Hamas-Israel war. It makes you wonder how on earth any problem will ever get resolved with so much chaos and upheaval in the world.

Why can’t people listen to each other respectfully? Why must so many things be met with hatred and spite? If humans can’t work together collaboratively for the shared goal of peace, how will peace ever be obtained?

I invite you to read how Hadassah, my volunteer organization, has been in the forefront of combatting antisemitism in the US and abroad.