Tel Aviv University (TAU) unveiled a poignant exhibit on Thursday, featuring over 1,000 empty seats in the Smolarz Auditorium, each one displaying a photo of a person abducted, missing, or killed in recent attacks by Hamas. The exhibit, organized by Daniel Zilber, chair of the TAU Student Union, aims to “expose the horrors” of these attacks and bolster Israel’s public diplomacy.
The event is a collaborative effort between the university and the student-led initiative “UNITED AGAINST TERRORISM,” which has already organized support rallies and exhibits at around 20 major universities in the US and Europe, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and MIT. Shaked Benafshi, the initiative’s founder and a former chair of the National Union of Israeli Students, said the activities “prove that international solidarity does exist when it comes to unacceptable acts of terrorism.”
TAU Student Union Chair Daniel Zilber stressed that the exhibit seeks to show “the extent of the horror” and that the students “will do everything to make sure that such a disaster never happens again.”
Liyam Chitayat, a freshman at MIT participating in the campaign, echoed Zilber’s sentiments, saying that the exhibit aims to show “the faces and stories behind the numbers.”