On Oct 7 Anniversary, Protesters Remake NYC Subway Ads
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has been aided and abetted at every step by one-sided coverage from the U.S. corporate media.
When Israel bombs a school or hospital full of innocent people, we’re told the victims were “human shields” for whose deaths Israel shares no responsibility. When Israel unleashes its powerful military on the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, we hear the same robotic mantra that ‘Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Meanwhile, we’re told that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are “tirelessly” working on a cease fire even as the U.S. administration refuses to use the leverage it has as Israel’s main arms supplier to compel the Netenyahu government to reach an agreement.
Enough!
This morning, activists from Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) marked the first anniversary of the war by reprogramming the ads on subway cars. On one Brooklyn-bound F train, ads for a lottery app, a hiring app, a new dating app and an app to “treat your depression,” with slickly produced anti-war ads. The Indypendent was there getting the story as we have been throughout the past year. To peruse the more than 50 original stories we’ve published over the past year, click here. To find more October 7 protest coverage, follow us on Indy Instagram and Indy Twitter. We’ll have more coverage tomorrow 5-6 pm on The Indypendent News Hour on WBAI-99.5 FM and streaming on wbai.org.
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Pro-Palestine Messages Replace New York City Subway Ads One Year After October 7th
By Amba Forest
Before this morning, a subway car on a Brooklyn-bound F train had ads including for a lottery app, a salad-bowl company, an app to “treat your depression,” a hiring app, a new dating app, and various law firms.
“Go from in a mood to in the mood” read the dating-app ad strip.
Now it reads, “With $20 Billion Weapons Deal, U.S. Aims to Help Israel Destroy Gaza,” with “What if the Times told the truth?” written off to the side.
Every ad in that subway car has been replaced with something of the like.
“In 2003, they lied about ‘weapons of mass destruction,’” reads one of the posters. “In 2023 they lied about “weaponized” mass rape. The New York Times and the American government are collaborators in mass death,”
“Inside the prison camp where Israel has tortured and sexually assaulted Gazans,” reads another, correcting a June 6 New York Times headline that originally read “Inside the Base Where Israel Has Detained Thousands of Gazans” about the Sde Teiman detention camp — from where leaked video footage shows a group of Israeli soldiers sexually assaulting a Palestinian man.
An anonymous group installed the new subway ads. The group frequently challenges The New York Times, which it accuses of being biased towards Israel to such an extent that it publishes shoddy reporting.
You may see other trains marked like this across the city today. The same goes for Philadelphia, Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Over 1000 people across those cities partook on this direct action, according to the organization.
Activists “took to subway cars and bus stops, highways and underpasses, streets and intersections, with a mass postering and culture disrupting campaign to display messages conveying the urgent truth: that Israel is committing a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and that the U.S. must stop sending Israel the arms they use to carry it out,” said the press release related to the action.
Francisco was on his way to work when he encountered the newly transformed subway car.
Some of the protest materials included Palestinian poetry.
“For a year, the New York Times has been lying to you about the U.S.-funded massacre of Palestinians,” reads one of the subway posters.
This action takes place one year after the Hamas attack where militants broke through the border with Israel and killed around 1,200 people there. In response, Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.
One of the new subway posters quotes a Times article headline, “Here is what to know about the ‘surprise attack’ on Israel.” Printed below is a note from the organization: “It was a prison break.”
According to official numbers, at least 41,870 people, including nearly 16,765 children, have been killed in Gaza sine Oct. 7. That number, though, is likely a serious undercount, pointed out a study by the medical journal Lancet, because the destruction of infrastructure in Gaza has made it extremely difficult to calculate all the “official” deaths. After applying a “conservative estimate” of four indirect deaths per one direct death, the July 10 Lancet investigation found that “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more” people have been killed in Gaza, or 8% of the pre-October population. That count would have risen since the release of the study in the summer. And since Sept. 23, when Israel, attempting once again to eradicate Hezbollah, began air raids over souther Lebanon, it has killed over 2,000 people there and caused major damage to vital civilian infrastructure.
Back in New York City, the MTA will likely act quickly remove the activists’ work, but plenty of the city’s workers on early communtes will have read the posters.
Of the four subway riders The Indypendent encountered, one was unbothered and two were in support of the direct action.
Francisco, a truck driver on the way to work who was sitting on the made-over F-train subway car, told The Indy, “[The activists] are obviously doing this to protest the violence. The world is interested in what’s happening. It’s a global problem. [Israel] should stop bombing. Countries shouldn’t be fighting for religion or power over each other.”
Kevin, also on his way to work, said, “I agree with what [the activistis] did. The government finds a way to destory us one way or another, whether its a matter of food or wars.”
“I don’t think Israel will stop it’s bombing, but they should. Everybody knows Israel is another Great Britain but in the present. They think everything belongs to them,” added Kevin.
Subway-car interviewees asked for only their first names to be used for fear of reprisal.
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