(New York Post) Members of New York’s influential Tisch family projected faces of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas onto the side of New York University’s library Monday in a show of support to the college’s Jewish students after posters bearing similar photographs were ripped down at the elite institution’s campus.
“There’s been a lot of threats down there towards Jewish students and they probably feel very isolated and alone, I would imagine,” a Tisch family member who was “really disturbed by acts of antisemitism on campus” told The Post on Thursday.
“This was partly to support the posters — to bring the hostages home — and partly to make them feel like they weren’t completely alone.”
The family member asked to remain anonymous to avoid furthering the divide that has emerged amid the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
He and other supporters stationed the projector inside the NYU Tisch School of the Arts building — named after the family in 1982 in recognition of a donation from Laurence A. and Preston Robert Tisch — so that the massive slideshow was blasted across the street and onto the West 4th Street façade of the university’s library.
The institution was not privy to the demonstration, he added. NYU did not respond to requests for comment.
Members of the Tisch family projected images of Israeli hostages on the facade of New York University’s library.Credit: Tisch Family
A crowd of roughly 70 organizers gathered on the Washington Square Park corner below to sing in Hebrew and wave Israeli flags.
The gigantic video features the names and photos of the youngest victims — including a 9-month-old baby and his 4-year-old brother — who are among the 100 Israelis kidnapped by Hamas when it launched its surprise attack on Israel Oct. 7.
The slideshow mimicked the posters that have been plastered and subsequently ripped down in cities across the nation, including NYU’s own campus.
A group of 70 people staged a pro-Israeli protest underneath the projection.Community News/Instagram
Three NYU students shamelessly tore down posters of the hostages that were posted outside the nearby Tisch Hall just one week earlier — with one student activist claiming she ripped the papers out of misplaced anger over the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
The incident at the namesake building directly inspired the Tisch’s to organize, the family said.
“What was shocking was, I thought the one thing we could agree on was that it’s wrong to take babies as hostages. And that was what was on the wall … it didn’t say anything about Hamas or Gaza it just said “Hostage” and the pictures and people were tearing them down angrily and we really didn’t like it,” another member of the Tisch family said.
The slideshow demonstration was a direct response to the three NYU students who were caught ripping down posters of hostages on the university campus last week.Credit: Tisch Family
The top university also saw the president of its Student Bar Association stripped of their position after circulating a column in the school’s newspaper accusing Israel of holding “full responsibility” for the terrorist attack that claimed at least 1,400 lives.
On Wednesday, eleven Jewish students at Cooper Union — which shares academic buildings with NYU — were barricaded inside the university’s library when pro-Palestinian protesters blew past security and aggressively pounded on the building’s doors
“The reason we did it down by NYU is because of all of the anti-Semitism down there, and we wanted the students to know that they shouldn’t feel like they needed to be stuffed in a room and silenced and not able to present who they really are,” the second Tisch family member said.
