This woman made Hamas’s hostages famous so the world would know them

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On October 7, 2023, as news broke of the terror attacks on Israel and the first horrific details of Hamas’s atrocities emerged, Tal Huber was in shock, glued to the television in her Tel Aviv-area home.

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“That was a nightmare for all of us, and the situation with the hostages, on top of everything, horrible,” said the Israeli graphic designer.

“I thought at that moment I needed to act.”

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As the sun came up Oct. 8, she headed to her design studio, at Giraff Visual Communications, on a mission: “I knew that I cannot continue doing my regular stuff, because it wasn’t important anymore.”

She wanted to grab the world’s attention. She came up with a grassroots poster campaign that shone a light worldwide on the hundreds of Israeli hostages taken back to Gaza. They went viral within hours; you’ve likely seen those posters in your city, whether you live in Montreal, Manhattan or Munich.

She was honoured for it this month by World Jewish Congress at a gala in New York City.

“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,” she said.

“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.”

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On that initial Sunday morning, she reached out to two Israeli street artists, Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid, to brainstorm on how to get the attention of New Yorkers, who she saw as 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,” she 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 20 easily downloaded posters.

They fanned across Manhattan within a day, she said. Soon, they popped up in countries in the European Union, and to her biggest surprise, Turkey.

“That amazed me, because we didn’t expect that to be so fast, and so big.”

Volunteers translated the posters into French, Italian and Spanish, with demand growing across the world, necessitating translations into an additional three dozen languages.

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By her reckoning, all but 50 countries in the world saw the faces of the kidnapped, in a combined 3,000 cities. It was “amazing to see” how the grassroots campaign has since raised global awareness of the hostage crisis. Within six months of the launch, a million posters were downloaded.

Israeli soldiers in Gaza asked that they be printed in Arabic, to place them on buildings to “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. It was intentional to leave out the blue and white colours of Israel, she said, to not “turn it into only an Israeli or Jewish” issue, but it quickly did.

What was surprising for her, were the number of times she’s been notified of posters being torn down. “This is antisemitism, the brutal way they treated the posters. At first it was scary. I didn’t know how to act,” she said.

In an unexpected twist, it motivated donors to help her grow the project — including donations that placed the message on billboards, vehicles, and a large screen at Times Square. Others smeared Vaseline on the posters, to make it less likely people would put their hands on them and rip them.

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Tala Zilberman, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz — where some 74 hostages lived, including nine-month-old Kfir Bibas and his family — helped expand the campaign beyond the initial 20.

“She started to work with me, giving me the names and pictures of the hostages from their kibbutz,” Huber said.

“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.”

Huber is confident the images of the bright, smiling civilians captured by Hamas put a human face on the conflict — and had an impact on decision-makers in the U.S. and Europe.

“It started to make pressure on governments and decision-makers,” she said.

She was awarded the annual Presidential Award for Volunteerism, given by the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, and this month, Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, recognized her with the ninth WJC Teddy Kollek Award for the Advancement of Jewish Culture.

More than 230 hostages — Israelis and foreign nationals — were taken October 7. There are 101 still held in Gaza, although some are believed to be dead.

“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,” Huber said.

“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.”

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