For weeks, we've witnessed a steady stream of videos featuring Hamas supporters and sympathizers ripping down posters advertising the active, ongoing plight of more than 200 hostages who were kidnapped from Israel during the terrorist organization's October 7th deadly rampage. I cannot help but to seethe with rage whenever clips of these deeply deranged acts cross my social media timeline. The cruel, inhumane impulse to tear down, destroy, or deface these fliers is difficult for civilized people to comprehend. One common theme I've noticed is that when people are confronted while engaged in this bafflingly ugly behavior, they tend to offer absolutely nothing in the way of a coherent explanation for what they're doing.
Guilt, and a desire not to be reminded of what their fellow "anti-Zionists" have done, and are still doing, must play some role in this. I suspect a twisted sense of who or what deserves public attention and sympathy is also at play: Only 'victims' of Israel matter. Israeli victims therefore complicate that mentality, so the Israeli victims must be diminished, dehumanized and erased. Some of the perpetrators are just hardcore bigots who proudly mug for the camera, refusing to engage with questions as they continue their actions. Others, like these horrible people, aggressively insult the people calling them out. They hate the Jewish state, they support what Hamas did to the Jews, and they don't see the hostages as victims, civilians, or even full humans.
Others are conspiracy-addled paranoiacs who insist the hostages aren't really hostages. I saw one person employ the verbiage of consent, arguing that the victims hadn't necessarily agreed to their images being published on the posters. This person was evidently less concerned about the hostages' consent on the matter of being kidnapped and held at gunpoint. Still others retreat immediately into a posture of faux victimhood -- as if documentation of, and questions about, their publicly-demonstrated hateful or brainwashed psychosis somehow amounts to harassment or an invasion of their privacy:
The instant faux victimhood. He’s filmed doing something reprehensible in public, then demands the filming stop. https://t.co/rXRID1LneF
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 31, 2023
But the most common reaction I've seen is a trance-like blank stare, occasionally accompanied by a few nonsensical sentence fragments:
This girl has no explanation for her conduct at all. She casually removes a hostage poster featuring two young children, then rips it into pieces. She mutters something about propaganda, and refuses to even attempt to justify the use of that word. It’s sick! https://t.co/br3idi3S1H
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 31, 2023
I attribute this general sort of response to ignorant leftists simply going along with the current 'virtue signal' ritual du jour, having utterly failed to think through the supposed virtue involved. It's as if these people believe deeply that their vandalism must somehow exist within a morally-correct framework, given their 'intersectional' tribe's passionate embrace of "pro-Palestine" rhetoric and online content. But when someone actually asks them what they're doing and why, they instantly recognize -- yet cannot process -- the indefensible nature of what they're up to. I can almost imagine the cognitive dissonance-dominated and ignorance-fueled internal monologue:
Here I am, someone who considers myself a 'progressive' and a very good person, walking around in the open, as I locate and destroy leaflets that have been posted to draw attention to civilian hostages -- including children -- who are being held against their will by terrorists on the other side of the world. This person with a camera is asking why I'm doing it. Well, haven't you seen? It's what we, the good people, do. I'd really like to say something about 'genocide' or 'apartheid' or 'ceasefire' or something about rivers and seas. But this person with a camera is just asking why I have this crumpled poster of a kidnapped toddler in my hand, and...I just...don't have any clue how to engage with that question. I'm very confident that we must be right because we always are. And this inquisitor must therefore be bad. But this is confusing and uncomfortable. I'm sure I'm on the good side, but this certainly doesn't look great, does it? Just don't say anything. Maybe I'll keep going, as to not admit fault? Maybe I should just walk away, having made my point. What is my point, again? Never mind that. Why is this person still filming me and being so intrusive and annoying? Leave me alone in my righteousness. I don't need to justify myself to you.
Mystifying and repulsive. I'm also confused by the thought process that leads to such feeble lies as this:
OMG this guy actually told the Post that "he took down the fliers for the purpose of keeping the city’s streets clean, not for antisemitic reasons, and apologized for offending anyone." An obvious, insulting lie.
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 29, 2023
This man set about the process of removing hostage posters with scissors that he deliberately brought with him, in-hand, from his house or office. It's not like he happened upon some of the fliers and suddenly flew into a morally-bereft rage and acted impulsively. No, his destruction of the posters was premeditated. And when he was caught and publicly identified doing the thing he'd very intentionally chosen to do, perhaps his career flashed before his eyes, so he decided to resort to insultingly weak gaslighting about being anti-litter. Then there's this variety of projection:
For @nytimes, @katierosman gets some of the people tearing down posters of kidnapped Israelis to explain why they are tearing down posters of kidnapped Israelis. https://t.co/NR4cNfYcWz pic.twitter.com/UOdGicQjy6
— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) October 31, 2023
While accusing others of not caring about people's lives -- it's "so obvious" -- this person (Miles Grant, 24, a leftist) is so blinkered by ideology that he's clearly angrier at people who blow the whistle on the deranged practice of hostage poster destruction than at the terrorists holding the hostages. I cannot fathom this brokenness. The Times story goes on:
He said he had felt concerned at times that he would end up in a viral video, but he has not let that deter him. “I think they’re putting them up to bait people to take them down” he said. “I think it’s disgusting how they’re trying to destroy people’s lives.” A woman in Brooklyn, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she said her family would be upset by the publicity, said she had torn down “kidnapped” posters after a friend in a group chat for activists encouraged her. The posters, she said the friend told her, amounted to anti-Islamic war propaganda. “So I said, ‘Cool beans, let’s take them down.’”
The flippancy. "Cool beans, let's take them down," coos the anonymous woman in Brooklyn, whose activist friends told her doing so would be taking a stand against "anti-Islamic war propaganda." I would love to hear her explanation for why mourning and drawing attention to the nightmare Hamas is actively inflicting on dozens of children is tantamount to "war propaganda." Please, lady, be specific. I'd guess she'd draw a blank on that one. She was simply told by the 'right' people that this was the 'right' thing to do, and she followed down this extremely dark path without a second thought. A empty-headed, effectively pro-Hamas sheep. More from the piece:
Criticism of the posters is creating dissension within the progressive Jewish community. Last week, Rafael Shimunov, a Jewish peace activist affiliated with a street art group called Art V War, posted a lengthy video on Instagram in which he considers the reasons some people put up the posters, including “public mourning,” and others take them down. He did not endorse the removal of the posters, but said that the people putting them up should also create posters of Palestinians who are missing. The posters “don’t include Palestinians, so are they concerned about missing people?” he asked. In the video, as he walks around the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn talking to the camera, he says that the area has few posters up, except for in front of a Palestinian restaurant. “These posters are being used to target Palestinians in our community,” he says, concluding: “When you’re reflexively attacking the people taking them down, maybe try to understand why they’re taking them down.” And, he says, some people putting the posters up may have benign motives, too — while for others, “the plan is to foment war.”
This "peace activist" is presented, bizarrely, as a thoughtful person. But he accuses some of the people putting up these fliers of missing Israeli civilians of plotting to "foment war," while contorting the situation into a victimhood narrative for 'targeted' Palestinians "in our community." Someone truly opposed to war would be unrelentingly critical of Hamas, whose surrender would instantly end the conflict and guarantee peace. This current war was started by Hamas on October 7th, when they butchered 1,400 Jews in cold blood. They'd have slaughtered every single Jew in Israel if they could have, by their own admission, and the 'values' enshrined in their charter. But people like Shimunov have mangled moral compasses, so they instead demand that the Jews putting up the placards of kidnapped fellow Jews "also create posters of Palestinians who are missing." This is the 'All Lives Matter' equivalent of this conflict, a moral position that approximately 100 percent of the poster rippers have previously rejected as racist and immoral, based on their standards. Jews are saying, "Jewish lives matter. Especially and urgently, these Jewish civilian hostages' lives matter, and their current, horrifying ordeal ought to be outwardly remembered and publicized."
Yet people like Miles Grant and Rafael Shimunov think those Jews have an obligation to propagandize on Hamas' behalf while they're at it, adding tendentious historical "context" to the posters of hostages, to explain "the events that led to this happening." 'This' being the massacre of Jews, with survivors taken captive -- atrocities that Grant seems to believe were at least partially justified. These people want Jews to give equal time to the 'other side,' or have their fliers thrown in the garbage. They even posit, on the record, that people hanging the fliers are doing so to cause war, or to "bait" others into removing them, in order to 'destroy their lives.' It's astoundingly backwards; a brazen reversal of culpability, agency, and motive. It's unethical. It's authoritarian. It's morally bankrupt. And it's becoming an actual, real-life talking point:
The Jews are now being blamed for putting up posters of their civilian hostages, thus “baiting” people into revealing themselves as morally degenerates by ripping them down. https://t.co/N5po0S6GRz
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 1, 2023
In one sense, I'm glad the Times published this story, as it highlights how even the 'best' explanations for these acts -- offered knowingly and willingly to a major newspaper -- are incoherent, unconvincing, and unacceptable. That sentiment is outweighed by the galling bothsidesism inherent in the piece. Look at this fascinating "firestorm" that's been "ignited" on American sidewalks. On one side, you have heartsick Jews pleading for the release of innocent hostages taken by murderous medieval terrorists, asking society to look at the victims' faces, and to say their names. On the other side, you have people destroying the posters, and engaging -- at best -- in 'whataboutist' deflections, and impugning the motives of the victims' advocates. What a curious quandary! Framing this is a normal or acceptable form of 'protest' is also just surreal to read:
I guess the massive, frequent hate rallies haven’t been a sufficient “release valve” and “protest” opportunity for the “anguished”? They must also destroy posters of literal hostages, children included, being held *right now* by genocidal terrorists?
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 31, 2023
NYT: Here are both sides! https://t.co/Qv1mi7UhWN
As is the case in this war itself, the morality gap is stark, and the right side is unmistakable.
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