A Broadway theater producer was caught tearing down posters of Israeli hostages from a traffic box in New York City.
James L. Simon used scissors to rip down the fliers pinned up in the Upper West Side featuring the hostages taken by Hamas during the attack on Israel on October 7 in which 1,400 people were killed.
A neighborhood blog shared footage of Simon, who co-produced the revival of Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ on Broadway in 2022, during the incident.
He was captured on video casually removing the posters on West 62nd Street and Broadway and throwing them into a nearby trash can.
Simon, who also produced the Broadway musical Pippin, insisted he was not anti-Semitic and that he took them down to keep the streets clean. He apologized for causing offense.
Broadway theater producer James L. Simon was caught tearing down posters of Israeli hostages from a traffic box in New York City
He used scissors to rip down the fliers pinned up in the Upper West Side featuring the hostages taken by Hamas during the attack on Israel on October 7 in which 1,400 people were killed
In the video, Simon, dressed in a black coat and brown pants, is seen lurking by a traffic box with scissors in his hands.
He then begins to cut the posters depicting the Israeli hostages and pulls them down.
The Broadway producer walks a couple of steps forward and throws it into a trash can in the large Jewish neighborhood.
Local blog I Love The Upper West Side shared the video on X and it has been viewed more than 16,000 times.
The man in the video was later identified as Simon and former Broadway producer Adam Epstein hit out at him.
‘You’re going to a dark and devious place if you’ve come to a place where you’re ripping posters off the wall of Israeli hostages, of innocent people held captive by terrorists,’ he told The New York Post.
In the video, Simon, dressed in a black coat and brown pants, begins to cut the posters depicting the Israeli hostages and pulls them down
The Broadway producer walks a couple of steps forward and throws it into a trash can in the large Jewish neighborhood
Simon apologized for causing offense and said he did not do it for anti-Semitic reasons but to keep the streets clean
Simon apologized for causing offense and said he did not do it for anti-Semitic reasons but to keep the streets clean.
He cited the city’s Sanitation Department rules and said: ‘I’m a strong supporter of free speech and encourage people to express their opinions, but all I’m asking is to do it legally.’
There have been several incidents involving people in New York taking down posters of Israeli hostages in recent weeks.
A group of furious construction workers confronted a man who was caught tearing down fliers.
The men jumped into action after witnessing a man pulling down posters taped to light posts on the corner of 67th Drive and 109th Street in Queens.
Jacob Birn, 24, had filmed the man for two blocks where he was repeatedly seen ripping down the posters.
On October 17, two young women were caught tearing down posters at NYU’s Tisch Hall.
They stripped clean a wall where students had plastered the faces of some of the hundreds of hostages taken by Hamas and ran off with the posters in their arms.