For supporting Palestine, Bella Hadid says she is unafraid to lost modelling jobs
New York City (QNN)- Palestinian-Dutch supermodel Bella Hadid has said she is unafraid to lose modelling jobs in order to continue her support for Palestine, days after she disclosed that her outspoken advocacy has cost her career opportunities and even relationships.
In a joint interview with Egyptian-American actor Ramy Youssef for GQ magazine on August 16, Bella Hadid, the daughter of Palestinian real-estate developer Mohamed Hadid and Dutch model Yolanda Hadid, referenced her parent’s divorce in 2000 when she relocated to California and felt that she was “extracted” from her Palestinian side of the family.
The 25-year-old supermodel, who has worked with major fashion houses across the globe, also opened up about her Muslim and Arab heritage and her continued support for the Palestinian cause.
“For so long I was missing that part of me, and it made me really, really sad and lonely,” she said, talking of her Arab heritage.
“I would have loved to grow up and be with my dad every day and studying and really being able to practice [Islam], just in general being able to live in a Muslim culture,” Hadid says. “But I wasn’t given that.”
Hadid said she is proud of her Palestinian heritage and often uses her platform as a tool to raise awareness about the Israeli occupation of Palestine. She also spends time thinking about her family and what they endured.
“I speak about [this stuff] for the elderly that are still living there that have never been able to see Palestine free, and for the children that can still grow up and have a beautiful life.”
Her father’s family was forced to leave Palestine in 1948 during the Nakba or “the Catastrophe” when Zionist militias expelled more than 700,000 Palestinians from historic Palestine and destroyed some 500 villages to make way for the creation of ‘Israel’.
At the time, Bella’s father became a refugee in Syria, losing his family home in Safad to an Israeli settler family.
Talking about how her career is affected by her support for Palestine, Bella said, “I realized that I’m not on this earth to be a model.”
She added, “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?”
The model’s comments come just days after her appearance on the Rep podcast, in which she revealed that she “had so many companies that stopped working with me. I have friends that completely dropped me,” due to her advocacy for her homeland, Palestine.
