RICH LOWRY: The kidnapped posters aren’t an affront

There are many things in American life considered offensive or controversial that never would have been before. Now, kidnapped posters have to be added to the list.

There’s an ongoing struggle in our streets over whether it’s legitimate to post flyers about people kidnapped in the Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, or whether this is a provocation that warrants the posters being torn down. As far as public debates go, this isn’t a close call. On one side there is decency and respect for the suffering of innocents. On the other, perversity, ignorance and hatred.

The contention over the posters is hardly the most consequential element of the debate over the Gaza war, but it is shocking nonetheless. The posters don’t include extensive editorial comment, and don’t include gory content. They are unadorned. They have the name and age, as well as a photo, of the hostage or hostages. They include a brief factual statement about the number of Israelis killed, wounded and kidnapped in the Oct. 7 attack.

At the bottom, the poster urges, “Please help bring them home alive.”

The posters don’t make any claims about the Temple Mount or the rightful ownership of the West Bank, or who’s been right or wrong in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. They are as straight as it gets. They achieve their power through their simplicity. There’s no need to fill in the details: You know each of these people, including women and children, suffered an unspeakable trauma that is ongoing with perhaps a worse fate yet to come. It is gut-wrenching.

Yet people in urban areas and on college campuses find it impossible to control their anger over them. Why? They can’t accept reminders of the true nature of the Hamas attack. They can’t bear Israelis, who are supposed to the colonizers and occupiers, being portrayed as victims.

They consider anything favorable to any Israeli, even one fearing for his or her life in a tunnel under Gaza somewhere, to be Zionist propaganda.

It’s truly an “A Few Good Men” moment — they can’t handle the truth.

It would be a little like taking down the ubiquitous yellow ribbons around trees during the Iran hostage crisis in 1980 for fear that people might draw the wrong conclusions about the Ayatollah Khomeini.

A Jewish peace activist in New York City has said that the “posters are being used to target Palestinians in our community,” and some of the people posting them intend “to foment war.” With pieces of paper taped to lampposts, mind you. Some of the anti-poster brigade seem more upset by notices of the hundreds of abductions on Oct. 7 than, say, random Hamas rocket attacks on Israel.

The people ripping down the posters, unsurprisingly, haven’t acquitted themselves well when caught on camera. When they are identified, they experience well-deserved obloquy. They shouldn’t be harassed, though, and shouldn’t, except in truly extraordinary circumstances, lose their jobs. But there’s one easy way to avoid the heartache of becoming known as a person who tears down posters of the innocent victims of terror, which is not to do it in the first place.

The correct impulse in reaction to Oct. 7 is to “never forget.” The opponents of the kidnapped posters, a month after the enormity and before the toll and consequences of the attack are fully known, insist to the contrary, “Please, don’t remind us.”

Rich Lowry is on X @RichLowry.