Israelis living abroad and members of Jewish communities from the United States, Chile, France and Sri Lanka, as well as Taiwan and New Zealand are contributing to the war effort in Israel in the only way possible. This has led to the hashtag "lettheworldknow", one of the largest social and international information campaigns ever, in which thousands of participants are volunteering in dozens of countries around the world.
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The purpose of the campaign is to get out to the public around the world the images of the Israeli abductees held captive by Hamas and to present them as human beings and individuals. The volunteers in every corner of the world distribute flyers presenting the kidnapped Israelis in the familiar format of the posters of missing persons and abductees in the U.S. These posters are hung at tourist sites and near well-known urban monuments in the main cities of the world.
One of the masterminds behind this move, defined by many as "the biggest guerrilla campaign in the world", is Anna Tambini, an Israeli residing in San Francisco who created the tag "lettheworldknow." Tambini wakes up every morning to find thousands of WhatsApp messages from dozens of groups of volunteers from all over the world. According to her, while we deal with the war, casualties, dead and kidnapped, most of the world continues to watch cat videos or videos of recipes. "The goal in distributing these posters was to move from the digital world into the physical world," she explains.
"There is no political propaganda in the posters, and there is not even an Israeli flag," she adds. "People develop a blindness to this, but as soon as a person gets off the train in Brooklyn, walks down a main street in Buenos Aires or a street in Rome and sees dozens of posters showing various missing people - it has a crazy effect, and no one can stay indifferent to it."
Tambini testifies that the campaign has spread like wildfire, with each volunteer contributing his part, from printing individual posters, to recruiting more volunteers, to sending planes loaded with posters to Jewish communities that could not finance the printing of the posters themselves. "It's not about money or connections, it's about the fighting spirit and the Israeli spirit. It gives me hope," she says.
The creators of the posters are a pair of Israeli street artists Dede Bandaid and Nitzan Mintz, who came to New York to participate in an artist program, until the war started. They thought about how they could contribute to the outreach effort and decided to produce these posters. In the first hours the response was not high, but the next morning they discovered to their astonishment that all of Manhattan was filled with posters they had designed. "It was like a miracle. From there everything kept growing," Tambini says.
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Act of solidarity in Italy with empty table for 203 captives
(Photo: Andreas SOLARO / AFP)
Among the thousands of volunteers is Jasmin Kolodro, a veterinary student who lives in Padua, Italy. Ever since she came across the posters, she and her friends have been working night and day to distribute and hang them all over the city.
Moran Droupman from Cincinnati, Ohio, says that she and her family tried to channel the pain into action: "If people see, stop, ask, and are interested, we know that it's good Hasbara. You understand that here, so far from home, this is your way to make a difference. Vered Yeret, who lives with her family in Boston, has been hanging posters around the city and campuses every night for more than a week, "There is overwhelming ignorance here, and people are not aware that children and old people have been kidnapped."
Also on the other side of the world, in Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, groups of Israelis are distributing the posters, even though underground posting of ads in Australia could result in a fine of up to $22,000 and a prison sentence. "Our goal is to raise awareness, because most Australians have no idea what's going on. Let them look and see what's going on in the other side of the world," they said.
The posters also reached the Dominican Republic, where David Malconyan has been living for the past nine years, who recruited his local friends to help him spread them. "While my sister and all my friends are in the reserves, the least we can do is show our support as Israelis."
The project's Instagram page responds 24/7, inviting volunteers from around the world to get in touch, join the campaign, publish and share content with the tag and hashtag #lettheworldknow.