Bella Hadid’s ‘Palestine’ Post Removed By Instagram, Platform Forced To Apologize

Bella Hadid, who this week accused Instagram of “bullying” after it removed a post mentioning Palestine, has now received an apology from the social media giant. Bella, 23 and half-Dutch, half-Palestinian – per her IG bio – made headlines for revealing her shock as a self-posted passport photo of dad Mohamed Hadid was swiftly removed by Instagram. The supermodel received a generic message over the photo going against “community guidelines.”

It’s turned into a storm. Bella’s Jordanian-American father has, on his old passport photo, “Palestine” listed as his birthplace. The Dior Beauty spokesperson and sister to 25-year-old Gigi Hadid shared the following image, below. She wrote:

“I am proud to be Palestinian. Everyone should post where their mother and fathers were born today! Remind them of how proud you are of where you come from !!!”

Bella then took to her stories to react to Instagram removing the photo, querying what aspect of the post went against “community guidelines.”

“Instagram removed my story that only said ‘My baba And his birthplace of Palestine’ with a photograph of his American passport,” Hadid wrote, adding:“@instagram exactly what part of me being proud of my father’s birthplace of Palestine is ‘bullying, harassment, graphic or sexual nudity?’”

Political tensions between Israel and the Palestinian people were assumed to be the reason behind Instagram’s actions – the platform has now fully apologized in a statement to Bella.

A spokesperson for Instagram’s parent company of Facebook stated:

“To protect the privacy of our community, we don’t allow people to post personal information, such as passport numbers, on Instagram. In this case the passport number was blurred out, so this content shouldn’t have been removed. We’ve restored the content and apologized to Bella for the mistake.”

Social media had largely appeared to back Bella, especially on Twitter. The United States, and likewise international law, does not recognize the state of Palestine, although 138 United Nations member countries do, with 2012 seeing Palestine become a non-member observer state of the U.N. Bella, alongside sister Gigi, regularly shouts out her Palestinian heritage, with 52-year-old dad Mohamed recently making headlines as he claimed his race and religion was targeted – he was ordered to demolish his $50 million Bel Air mansion. The real estate developer stated:

“In my opinion, and I hate to say it, this whole thing is prejudice against me, who I am and my religion. They’re racist,” he said, adding: “Absolute racist.”

Bella’s mother Yolanda is Dutch. The star herself is American-born.