Best known as the father of supermodel sisters Gigi and Bella Hadid, Nazareth-born real estate magnate Mohamed Hadid is also notable for his vocal support of the Palestinian cause — something that has resulted in him sharing rather controversial posts on several occasions.
In 2020, for example, he apologized after posting a cartoon on Instagram that depicted an American police officer kneeling on the neck of a black man while embracing an Israeli soldier doing the same to a Palestinian.
In a subsequent apology – later deleted – Hadid commented: “If my remark came off with Anti-Semitism toward the Jewish people I do apologize … Love and peace and coexistence is the answer.”
Another incident came just two months later, when Hadid falsely attributed the following quote to celebrated Jewish physicist Albert Einstein:
It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionists (Jews) do to Palestinian Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews.”
Einstein, who was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, was, in fact, an ardent Zionist, and once said: “[The] Zionist cause is very close to my heart … I am very confident of the happy development of the Jewish colony and am glad that there should be a tiny speck on this earth in which the members of our tribe should not be aliens.”
Now comes Hadid’s latest social media misstep. On May 7, he shared a video to his 1.3 million Instagram followers of the late Israeli prime minister Golda Meir and claimed that it shows she was a “proud Palestinian.”
In the clip posted by Hadid, Meir states: “I’m Palestinian. From 1921 until 1948 I carried a Palestinian passport. There was no such thing in this area as Jews and Arabs and Palestinians.”
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However, in the full interview, which Hadid did not include, Meir suggests the notion of a Palestinian identity is a modern development, pointing out that prior to Israel’s birth there were just “Jews and Arabs” and rhetorically asking, “When were the Palestinians born?”
Meir also noted that there is no difference between Arabs living on the east or west side of the Jordan River, and highlighted how Jordan had failed to establish a Palestinian state when it ruled the West Bank between 1948 and 1967.
Nonetheless, Hadid asserted that Meir’s comments were proof that she was a “proud Palestinian” even though “the full interview reflects her colonial Zionist ideology bent on ethnic cleansing and erasing Palestine.”
His dalliance with historical revisionism continued:
Her remarks above do prove though, that tolerance, co-existence and peace were prevalent in Palestine pre 1948, where all faiths were welcomed and received equal rights in the #holyland.
Then arrived colonial #zionism with the founding of the state of Israel and with it forced expulsions, #nakba , occupation, apartheid and war crimes being committed daily to this day, that #goldameir was directly complicit in, making her what?
There are several issues that need to be unpacked here.
First, it is abundantly clear that Meir was ironically referencing her “Palestinian passport” to draw attention to the fact that she was living under the British Mandate of Palestine between 1918 and 1948, and the very idea of Palestinian national identity dates only as far back as this recent point in time.
Second, Hadid’s claim that the Holy Land was a utopia of “tolerance, co-existence and peace” prior to 1948 conveniently forgets the Arab massacres of Jews in the 1920s that were ordered by Haj Amin el-Husseini, who became grand mufti of Jerusalem in 1921.
Arab intolerance of Jews is well documented and to this very day, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which was a commitment by the British government to work towards the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people,” is treated by Palestinians as the “original sin.” In short, Jewish self-determination has always been anathema to Arabs.
Finally, Hadid neglects to mention that in the same interview Meir lamented how Arabs refused to accept the 1947 Partition Plan that would have seen the creation of two independent states. Instead, a war was launched by Arab countries against their Jewish neighbors — a pattern of behavior that continues today with the Palestinian leadership’s incessant incitements to violence and rejection of a solution to the conflict.
To put it mildly, Hadid’s grasp of local history is tenuous. Hopefully, his 1.3 million Instagram followers will take his bizarre conclusions with little more than a grain of salt.
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