Of Palestine, supermodel Bella Hadid and Instagram’s public apology

1 min read
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Bella Hadid (Source: Instagram)

Palestine-Dutch supermodel Bella Hadid criticised Instagram for taking down a picture of her father’s passport, in which his birthplace was listed as Palestine. After she lashed out at the platform for “silencing history”, Instagram apologised and acknowledged that the post was wrongly removed.

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Screenshots of her Instagram stories were shared widely across social media sites

The 23-year-old model had shared an image of her father’s old passport. Though her father – real estate mogul Mohammed Hadid – had an American passport, the place of birth listed was Palestine, and Bella wrote that she was proud of her roots.

bella hahid insta palestine bullying
Screenshots of her Instagram stories were shared widely across social media sites

However, the post was taken down and Bella was told that it violated the platform’s community guidelines. Hadid shared a screenshot of the message she received from Instagram, which cited violations of community guidelines, including harassment and bullying.

Slamming the app, she wrote: “Instagram removed my story that only said ‘My baba And his birthplace of Palestine’ with a photograph of his American passport. Are we not allowed to be Palestinian on Instagram? This, to me, is bullying.”

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Bella with her father and other family members (Source: Instagram)

She also added, “You can’t erase history by silencing people. It doesn’t work like that.”

In a later post, she wondered if the app wants her father to change his birthplace. Resharing the picture, she wrote “I love Palestine” and urged her followers to post where their parents were born.

Many users reshared Bella’s photos and praised the model for speaking out against Instagram’s decision. Screenshots of her Instagram stories were being circulated.

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Bella with her father (Source: Instagram)

A spokesperson for Instagram’s parent company Facebook said that content is not removed based on people’s nationality or ethnicity, nor was Hadid’s content removed because of its reference to Palestine.

“To protect the privacy of our community, we don’t allow people to post personal information, such as passport numbers, on Instagram,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to E! News following outrage online. However, the spokesperson acknowledged the post was wrongly removed.

“In this case the passport number was blurred out, so this content shouldn’t have been removed,” the spokesperson said, adding that they’d restored the picture and apologised to the supermodel.

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