Armed with a pair of scissors, a Broadway show producer was seen cutting down flyers of Israeli hostages captured by the terrorist group Hamas in the name of keeping New York's streets clean, the New York Post reports.
A video, shared online by the neighborhood blog, "I Love the Upper West Side," shows James L. Simon, a Broadway producer, removing a poster at West 62nd Street and Broadway — a heavily Jewish neighborhood. The poster featured an image of one of the approximately 200 hostages taken by Hamas during its attack on Israel on Oct. 7th.
Struck by a sudden compulsion of ecophilia, Simon told The Post he removed the flyers because he wanted to keep New York's streets clean, not for antisemitic reasons. Simon later apologized for offending anyone.
"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," he stated, riffing on city Sanitation Department rules.
Following the event, Simon received pushback from fellow Broadway producers.
Adam Epstein, a show producer in his own right, told The Post, "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."