In this op-ed, writer Aamina Khan explores the glut of celebrity responses to recent events in Israel and Palestine and why we shouldn’t wait for celebrities, often hurried and uninformed, to weigh in.
The cult of celebrity lives and breathes even through times of war. All eyes have been on Gaza and Israel for the past two weeks, after a Hamas attack on October 7 killed an estimated 1,400 Israelis, with hundreds still being held hostage. Almost immediately, the state of Israel declared war and launched a sustained military attack, killing and injuring over 6,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Civilians, including children, are dead; all eyes should be on Gaza and Israel. It seems, though, that quite a few eyes are also on Bella Hadid, Gigi Hadid, Kylie Jenner, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Noah Schnapp, Kehlani, Justin Bieber, and a number of other celebrities as people — and governments — look to the rich and famous for opinions about what’s going on.
Posts from celebrities have ranged from articulate and meaningful to messy and ignorant. A lot of public figures have spread blatant misinformation: Both Justin Bieber and Jamie Lee Curtis shared photos of atrocities from Gaza, incorrectly labeled as photos of Israel or with the Israeli flag, and then deleted them when called out. Meanwhile, hundreds of actors and executives, including Gal Gadot (who did compulsory service in the IDF), signed a letter to President Joe Biden calling for the release of Hamas hostages — a letter that doesn’t address the history of occupation and makes no mention of what UN experts warn is a “risk of genocide against the Palestinian people.”
Wherever your celebrity of choice falls on this spectrum, it’s worth asking why we look to them in the first place, why we can’t seem to shake our want for their opinions, and how we think through whose opinions are potentially helpful or harmful when we can’t ignore them.
Of course, some celebrities have used and will use their platforms to express opinions about global crises, which is their right. But we as a culture need to stop asking them to make statements, which are often hurried and uninformed. Celebrities aren’t experts. They’re not news organizations (which themselves can be flawed), and they’re not the sole arbiters of morality. We don’t have to treat them as anyone other than regular citizens, people whose social media output on serious issues deserves a critical eye.
This extends beyond Israel and Palestine and into the ways we process information, educate ourselves, and empathize with people worldwide. Human suffering is happening all around us, in nearly endless ways. What do we owe one another, beyond checking a celebrity’s IG account to see if they’ve responded in a way that’s exactly right in the eyes of whoever is looking?
There are a host of reasons someone may choose to stay silent and, though I’m not providing justifications, one of those reasons is that visibility rarely equates to safety when it comes to marginalized voices. Earlier this month, the official State of Israel Instagram account shared Gigi Hadid’s recent response to the ongoing violence, and wrote this, directed at Hadid: “Have you been sleeping the past week? Or are you just fine turning a blind eye to Jewish babies being butchered in their homes? Your silence has been very clear about where you stand. We see you.”
Bella and Gigi are two of the most visible Palestinians in our culture today. On October 10, Gigi posted her feelings about what is happening in Gaza to Instagram, denouncing antisemitism and expressing grief for the loss of innocent lives. “There is nothing Jewish about the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians,” she wrote. “Condemning the Israeli government is not antisemitic and supporting Palestinians is not supporting Hamas.” The Hadid family is now reportedly facing death threats and doxxing.
Since October 7, the FBI has recorded increased threats against Jewish and Muslim communities, according to the New York Times. More broadly, in a time when anti-Arab, antisemitic, and Islamophobic misinformation is actively being spread, and following the Trump administration’s emboldening of far-right violence against Muslims and Jews, I think we can stand to care a little less about celebrities.
Instead, we should focus our action and concern on active ethnic cleansing efforts, on the ever-looming specter of white supremacy, and on dehumanization that serves only to fuel hatred and violence. Those who abuse power, exploit the innocent, and perpetuate injustice would love nothing more than to keep us distracted and debating what a bunch of famous, beautiful people are doing or not doing. What are you doing and not doing?
Of course, we can multitask. We can care about celebrities and their opinions — and we can and should think critically, look for sources, and evaluate those opinions — while also staying focused on the suffering of others. We have memed our way through unprecedented events before in the name of coping; at this point, perhaps this communication style is a sign of the times, an online version of a political cartoon.
But there is something deeply grotesque about the watchful lens on celebrity behavior in the middle of a human rights crisis. Innocent people, including children, have died violently and are still dying as we in the US watch from our devices. Celebrity platforms may be big and possibly transformative, but our desire to focus on their opinions in the middle of what one UN expert called a “mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” is a really transparent way to make the loss of innocents about ourselves.
There’s a weird bias that we all have, wherein we collect information about morality from celebrities because we want to assume that they morally align with us, as if they were beloved fictional characters. We want confirmation of that everywhere and on every issue, especially on something as divisive as the occupation of Palestine.
Bella Hadid’s name has trended for weeks on social media as people have awaited her statement, though she has made it clear in the past that she believes in a liberated Palestine and says that she’s faced censorship on Instagram and social and professional repercussions for being vocal about Palestinian liberation. If you search her name on X (formerly known as Twitter), the results populate with memes imagining Bella beefing with fellow models and celebrities, like Kylie Jenner, who shared a picture of the Israeli flag that expressed support for Israel from the account @StandWithUs, and then deleted it.
On October 26, Bella posted an essay on Instagram expressing heartbreak for the lives lost in Palestine and Israel, as well as confirmation of the reports of death threats to her family and leaked personal information. “It is important to understand the hardship of what it is to be Palestinian, in a world that sees us as nothing more than terrorists resisting peace,” she wrote. “It is harmful, it is shameful, and it’s categorically untrue.”
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It’s notable that she posted this almost three weeks after Hamas’ Al Qassam Brigade first infiltrated the Israeli border. In that time, the nature of the violence has changed daily, sometimes even hourly, on the ground as well as on social and in traditional media. As mentioned earlier, people started speculating what Bella might say immediately. Her post was thoughtful and emotional, but above all, due to Bella’s visibility, it was necessarily careful.
Bella has made her stance on Palestine, as well as the blowback she received in the past, ferociously clear, and we can imagine the Hadid family’s heartbreak in seeing industry friends turn a blind eye to Israeli occupation. It’s personal to them the way it’s personal to other Palestinian Americans, and they deserve space the same way we should give Jewish people space and silence to grieve, especially given the public harassment Gigi has faced after being antagonized by Israel’s official social media channels.
But to those who trended her name incessantly on social media, those who carelessly shared a celebrity’s misinformed post, those who prioritized a celebrity’s reaction over their own research and attention to the very real situation in the region, I need y’all to focus. Stop waiting for celebrities to say something. That’s a great way to stay online and upset forever. Nobody’s liberation will be found on the other side of actors and artists making Instagram posts.
Instead, educate yourselves on media literacy, which leads to understanding how and why misinformation is spread. We are all going to need to get better at spotting misinformation, independently verifying the things we share, and being savvier at assessing primary sources and secondary analyses to inform our opinions. Because at the end of the day, when people have questions, you should have answers, and not just about who shared or liked what infographic.
