Dear Printed Matter,

We, the undersigned, are appalled by the choice of image included in the collage by Shadow Comms, now featured in your storefront, and request its immediate removal.

The work includes the photograph taken by Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa during the early hours of October 7, which shows a bulldozer breaking down the wall between Gaza and Israel, with the caption The Struggles of Gaza Resonate Around the Earth: from the Americas, to Congo, to Sudan, to Kashmir. 

The choice here is to feature this image as a moment of liberation, when it is, in fact, the beginning of the end. It is a documentation of the moments before the worst attack to have ever been launched on Israel. This image captures the trigger for the war and the devastation that took over the Middle East. 

Hamas militants and Gazans shown in this image attacked civilians in their homes, killed, injured, raped and mutilated children, women and men, Jews and non-Jews, Israelis, Arabs and foreign nationals. They took hostage 240 individuals, kidnapping them into Gaza. 120 of them are still held captive, many of them are dead. They were young people who attended a music festival nearby and found themselves running for their lives, they were family members who were forever separated from one another, they were children who lost their parents, parents who lost their children. Over 1200 people lost their lives, tens of thousands of people were evicted, and this was just the prelude to a coordinated attack from the North and from the sea.

By featuring this image in your NYC storefront with this caption, you chose to ignore the loss, grief and devastation that defines life now for Israelis and Jews worldwide, and you also chose to glorify a terror organization that willfully and knowingly made their subjects into martyrs. You chose to amplify hate, instead of finding ways to work together to benefit all people in the Middle East.

Moreover, the text about the project relates to the attack on October 7 as "Toufan Al-Aqsa," or "The Flood of Al-Aqsa," which is the term used by Hamas to describe the horrors they have caused. In other words, by supporting and promoting this project, you have also allowed terrorists to write the narrative. 

At the heels of the recent attack of Anne Pasternak’s private residence and growing antisemitism, Printed Matter should have used its platform to lead the path toward bridging gaps instead of deepening them.