Instagram apologises over removing Bella Hadid’s Palestinian post

Palestinian-Dutch supermodel Bella Hadid has called out Instagram for removing one of her posts, in which she shared a photo of her father’s passport showing his birthplace as Palestine.

The 23-year-old model used the social media platform's stories function to proudly show her father Mohamed Hadid's now-expired US passport, which lists his place of birth as Palestine. Alongside the photo, Hadid added the comment, "My baba and his birthplace of Palestine."

It is not clear why the platform chose to take down the image, however Hadid later shared a screenshot of the message she received from Instagram, citing violations of community guidelines, including harassment and bullying.

Hadid hit back, tagging Instagram and asking why her post was taken down.

Now, Instagram has apologised to the model for the action. A spokesperson for Facebook, Instagram’s parent company responded to Hadid’s outburst in a statement given to Page Six.

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

Bella had previously shared a screenshot of the notification she received from Insta saying the content went against its community guidelines, writing, “@Instagram exactly what part of me being proud of my father’s birthplace of Palestine is “bullying, harassment, graphic or sexual nudity?”

Bella then went on to school the app for allegedly doing what it went against, saying, “Are we not allowed to be Palestinian on Instagram? This, to me, is bullying.”

She then added, “You can’t erase history by silencing people. It doesn’t work like that,” before re-sharing the picture of Mohamed Hadid’s passport. “Do you want him to change his birth place for you?” she questioned this time. In another post, she also wrote, “I am proud to be Palestinian,” urging others to also share where their parents are from.

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