After Bella Hadid called out Instagram for deleting a post about her father’s Palestinian heritage, a spokesperson from the social media platform issued an apology.
The supermodel posted a photo of her father Mohamed Hadid’s passport stating his birthplace as Palestine, but the post was removed for “violating their community guidelines”.
In a statement to , a spokesperson from Instagram’s parent company Facebook explained the content was not removed due to the reference to Palestine, but did note it was removed by mistake.
“To protect the privacy of our community, we don’t allow people to post personal information, such as passport numbers, on Instagram,” the spokesperson 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.”
Last week, the 23-year-old shared a screengrab showcasing her post had been removed saying, “Instagram removed my story that only said ‘My baba and his birthplace of Palestine’ with a photograph of his American passport.”
Directly tagging the social media platform, the model questioned what it was about her “being proud of [her] father’s birthplace” that should be deemed “bullying, harassment, graphic or sexual nudity”.
“Are we not allowed to be Palestinian on Instagram?” she continued. “This, to me, is bullying. You can’t erase history by silencing people. It doesn’t work like that.”
Hadid went on to repost her father’s passport photo which was deleted saying, “Do you want him to change his birthplace for you?”
The model’s 71-year-old father was born in Palestine in 1948 and holds Jordanian and US citizenship. Meanwhile, the model’s mother, Yolanda Hadid, is Dutch.
