Dave Gordon
Tal Huber was glued to the television set in her Tel Aviv area home, watching as information came in about the Hamas terror attacks on her country. “I was in shock, just like everybody else,” said the Israeli graphic designer.
“That was a nightmare for all of us, and the situation with the hostages, on top of everything, horrible. I thought at that moment I needed to act.”
As the sun came up a day later, Huber headed to her design studio, at Giraff Visual Communications, on a mission to do her part. “I knew that I cannot continue doing my regular stuff, because it wasn’t important anymore.”
A Campaign Is Born
Huber reached out to two Israeli street artists, married couple Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid (yes, that’s a pseudo name), for a brainstorming session on how to get the attention of New Yorkers, who she believed would be the best test case for a marketing campaign.
“I wanted people in the streets of New York to understand the horrible situation, with a visual, emotional language,” Huber said. Those sessions inspired her to design the “Kidnapped” posters of the Israeli hostages – in bold lettering, with the hostage’s name and age.
The format was based on missing persons posters and milk carton campaigns. Initially, it was unclear how many hostages there were, so Huber and her team used the information they had at the time, uploading just twenty posters. The posters fanned across Manhattan within a day, she said.
“People were starting to see that something was wrong. They came closer to the posters, and then they understood,” she said.
The Campaign Takes Off
Soon, the posters popped up in countries in the European Union, and to Huber’s surprise, they got traction in Turkey. “That amazed me, because we didn’t expect that [spreading of posters] to be so fast,
and so big.”
Volunteer teams translated the posters into French, Italian, and Spanish, with demand growing across the world, necessitating translation of the posters into another three dozen languages. By Huber’s reckoning, all but fifty countries in the world saw the faces of the kidnapped, in three thousand cities. It was “amazing to see” how the grassroots campaign has raised global awareness of the hostage crisis. Within six months of the launch, a million posters were downloaded.
Israeli soldiers in Gaza requested posters printed in Arabic, to place them on buildings, and “show the Gazans why we were there, and that we’re not going to leave until the hostages come home.”
Previously, Huber worked on branding projects for the Maccabiah Games, and designed the official stamp for Israel’s 70th anniversary. She intentionally did not include Israel’s blue and white colors on the hostage posters so as not to “turn it into only an Israeli or Jewish” issue.
Vandalism
What was surprising for Huber were the number of times she’s been notified of posters being torn down. “This is anti-Semitism, the brutal way they treated the posters. At first, it was scary. I didn’t know how to react,” she said. In an unexpected twist, the tearing down of posters motivated donors to help her grow the project – including the funding of placing the message on billboards, vehicles, and a large screen at Times Square.
“It was funny,” Huber said regarding people’s ingenuity to smear Vaseline on the posters to make it less likely people would put their hands on them to rip them down. Users on social media took the opportunity to add some levity, by running videos of the vandalism in reverse, to make it look like vandals were putting the posters up, instead of tearing them down. “Those videos went viral and they did a good job. It gave us the opportunity to take the message louder, and bigger.”
With the benefit of hindsight, Huber realized that it became more difficult for people to hit the streets on a postering campaign in the chill of winter, beginning two months after the terror attack. “People were cold, and it was frustrating. People stopped going out for a while,” she told Community. “Looking back, I would have tried to figure out a way to solve this, and keep the movement alive, in high volume.” Fortunately, she said that government officials in the US and Europe still noticed the posters in their cities. “It started to put pressure on governments and decision makers. If I look back, I would try to figure out how to keep it [the hostage crisis] all the time in a high level of discussion.”
Recognition
In recognition of her activism, Huber received the annual Presidential Award for Volunteerism, given by the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog.
In early November 2024, Ronald S. Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, presented Huber with the ninth WJC Teddy Kollek Award for the Advancement of Jewish Culture. It was noted at the ceremony that “through her ‘Kidnapped from Israel’ poster art, she has raised global awareness of the Israeli hostage crisis in Gaza and kept alive the hope for their safe return.”
“It’s not my comfort zone to stand in front of a huge crowd and speak, but I did it on behalf of the kidnapped, and the people who took action, and did this campaign around the world. So, it was very important,” she said regarding the ceremony.
“I feel like things are getting back to normal, and people are forgetting, going back to their life and
continuing their life. For me, every event or every recognition, is a chance to talk about the hostages and to keep it focused for everyone.”
The Campaign Continues
For Huber, the project is now more than just a humanitarian effort. She has made personal connections with those affected. “When I first started, I got thousands of messages from the families. They knew something was going on with this campaign, and they wanted their loved ones to be a part of it. I now know all their stories. I learned about all the people who were kidnapped.”
Tala Zilberman reached Huber from Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the hardest hit communities, where some 74 hostages lived, including the Bibas family and their well known redheaded children, Kfir and Ariel. “She [Tala] started to work with me, giving me the names and pictures of the hostages from their kibbutz.”
With 101 hostages still being held in Gaza, Huber is determined to continue her activism, until they all return home. “I won’t stop until they’re back,” she said.
“I know there’s a lot of despair, and we all get tired. We feel hopeless, feeling that we don’t know if what we’re doing is changing anything. The politicians haven’t pushed this. When the first hostages came back, there was a lot of power in the streets, and people didn’t let go.
“This is why I’m trying to keep on going. We cannot stop. I do believe that people have the power to change and influence.”