Facebook Apologizes For Deleting Bella Hadid Instagram Post Celebrating Her Palestinian Father

Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images

Facebook has apologized after its platform Instagram deleted one of supermodel Bella Hadid’s posts celebrating her Palestinian father this week.

Hadid called out Instagram on Tuesday after the social network deleted the post on her story.

bella hadid just ended Instagram and we love to see! pic.twitter.com/tzOrWR8PnG

— morsal (@bizzzleschanges) July 7, 2020

“Instagram removed my story that only said ‘My baba And his birthplace of Palestine’ with a photograph of his American passport,” complained Hadid, before asking the platform “exactly what part of me being proud of my father’s birth place of Palestine is ‘bullying, harassment, graphic, or sexual nudity’?”

“Are we not allowed to be Palestinian on Instagram? This, to me, is bullying,” she continued. “You can’t erase history by silencing people. It doesn’t work like that.”

Posting the photo of her father’s passport again, she asked Instagram, “Do you want him to change his birthplace for you?”

“I’m proud to be Palestinian,” the model went on, adding, “Everyone should post where their mother and fathers were born today! Remind them how proud you are of where you come from!”

In a statement, however, a spokesperson for Instagram parent company Facebook told Mediaite that the post was not removed over references to Palestine.

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