Gigi Hadid's popularity on Instagram has waned slightly, after she shared a video saying that Israel harvested the organs of dead Palestinians, and falsely claimed Israel is the "only country in the world" holding children as prisoners of war.
In recent days, the model has faced criticism for her posts over the weekend, which came as Gaza remains embroiled in an intense conflict between the Israeli military and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which carried out a bloody surprise attack on southern Israel on October 7, killing over 1,200 people, per the Associated Press.
Palestinian militants also took more than 200 hostages, with their ultimate release being one of the primary goals espoused by the Israeli government. Subsequent action in Gaza by the Israeli military has killed over 13,000, The Associated Press reported.
As discussion around the war has seen a number of public figures face backlash for their stances, Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, shared a video by Instagram user Umme Murtaza. In the clip, Murtaza told followers to "watch this disturbing video, where health officials admitted that Israeli authorities had harvested the organs of dead Palestinians for years without their consent."
She then cut to footage of Meira Weiss—an anatomist and professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem—discussing organ harvesting as part of an investigative report that aired on Israel Channel 2 in 2015. The news segment alleged that the Israeli Institute of Forensic Medicine was stealing organs from Palestinian prisoners detained by Israeli forces.
Hadid, who has long been an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian cause, was widely condemned for the post and was accused by her detractors of "blood libel."
She also faced backlash for a separate Instagram post, in which she erroneously claimed that Israel is the "only country in the world" holding children as prisoners of war. She went on to accuse Israel of "abduction, rape, humiliation, torture, murder of Palestinians years and years before Oct. 7, 2023."
In the since-deleted post, Hadid highlighted Palestinian Ahmad Manasra as an example. Manasra was arrested by Israeli police back in 2015 at the age of 13 and sentenced to 12 years in prison for, along with his 15-year-old cousin, stabbing a 13-year-old boy and a 20-year-old Israeli security guard in Jerusalem. The sentence was later reduced to 9.5 years. His cousin was subsequently shot dead by police.
On Tuesday, Hadid issued an apology for the post. After insisting that she does not "stand behind the spreading of misinformation," and is against antisemitism, Hadid said that she "will continue to pray for the safe return of all hostages and peace and safety for the people of Gaza and Israel."
"It is well documented, by credible human rights organizations, that there has been systemic mistreatment of the Palestinian people by the government of Israel," she also said. "I know these historical issues well because they are the history of my own family, Palestinians who were forced to flee their homeland in the late 1940s."
Newsweek has contacted a representative of Hadid via email for comment.
In the days since her weekend posts, Hadid has seen a dip in her popularity on Instagram, with figures from Social Blade showing a steady decline in recent days.
After gaining more than 10,000 and 5,000 followers on the platform on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, Hadid lost 1,795 on Monday, 4,791 on Tuesday, and 7,221 on Wednesday. Over the past 30 days, she has been unfollowed by 121,050 accounts.
While the figures show a consistent decline in followers, Hadid still has more than 79 million on the image-sharing platform.
On the allegations of organ harvesting, an interview with Dr. Yehuda Hiss—former head of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute—was leaked in 2009. Recorded in 2000 by Nancy Scheper-Hughes—professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley—Hiss said that pathologists at the institute took skin, corneas, bones and heart valves from the bodies of Israeli citizens, Israeli soldiers, Palestinians and immigrants, often without consent from the deceased's family.
"We started to harvest corneas…whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family," Hiss said.
The Israeli military also confirmed that organ harvesting took place, but that it ended in the 1990s.
"This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer," a spokesperson told Israel Channel 2.
However, in her book On Their Dead Bodies, Weiss alleged the practice continued until 2002, claiming the organs were taken for research, medical education and transplantation purposes.
The release of Scheper-Hughes' recording was in response to an article by Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. The publication featured interviews with Palestinians who alleged that young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip were being killed by the Israeli military and their bodies returned with organs missing.
Donald Bostrom—the journalist who wrote the article—said there was no evidence of Israeli forces harvesting Palestinians' organs, but that he believed Israel's donation policy needed to be investigated.
In a statement at the time, Israel's health ministry said: "The guidelines at that time were not clear. For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law."
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