The supermodel said she will continue to stand for the Palestinian cause as she’s not “on this earth to be a model”
FILE PHOTO: Bella Hadid © Getty Images / Vittorio Zunino Celotto
American supermodel of Palestinian descent, Bella Hadid, has revealed that her continued support for the Palestinian cause has cost her “many” jobs. Companies stopped working with her over the issue, Hadid told Libyan-American journalist, Noor Tagouri, for her Rep podcast earlier this week.
“I really do believe that if I started speaking about Palestine, when I was 20, I wouldn’t have gotten the recognition and the respect that I have now,” Hadid, who is now 25, said. Together with her sister Gigi, also a supermodel, Bella is known as one of the most vocal supporters of Palestine.
“I had so many companies stop working with me,” she told Tagouri, without naming any specific firms. In April, the supermodel also said she was shadow banned by Instagram over her Palestinian activism.
“When I post about Palestine, I get immediately shadow banned and almost 1 million less of you see my stories and posts,” she wrote at the time.
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In a separate interview with GQ magazine on Tuesday, Hadid said that she was not afraid of losing her job and abandoning her modeling career altogether if that was the cost of her continued support for the Palestinian cause.
“I’m so lucky and blessed that I’m in a position where I can speak out the way that I do. And really, the downfall is what? That I lose my job?” she said. “I realized that I’m not on this earth to be a model,” Hadid added.
In March, Vogue Magazine edited out a line about Palestine from a piece about an Instagram post by Bella’s sister Gigi, where she compared the ongoing conflict in Ukraine to the suffering of Palestinians. As the article was promoted on Instagram, it was met with a barrage of criticism from people accusing the magazine of giving a platform for “highly offensive” views. Vogue removed all mention of Palestine from both its Instagram post and the original article the next day.
Several actors, including Mark Ruffalo and Emma Watson, who have spoken out in support of Palestinians, had to later apologize amid accusations of anti-Semitism.
