Israeli-born actress Gal Gadot, most famous for her role as Wonder Woman, is facing an outcry after a relatively neutral post on social media amid a round of attacks and counter-attacks between Israel and the terrorist run Gaza Strip.
“My heart breaks,” she wrote in a post shared on Twitter and Instagram. “My country is at war. I worry for my family, my friends. I worry for my people. This is a vicious cycle that has been going on for far too long. Israel deserves to live as a free and safe nation, our neighbors deserve the same. I pray for the victims and their families, I pray for this unimaginable hostility to end, I pray for our leaders to find the solution so we can live side by side in peace. I pray for better days.”
Despite blocking comments on both social media platforms, the post garnered close to 130,000 quote tweets which in turn sparked a firestorm.
“Gal Gadot is wrong. Israel is not at ‘war’ with Palestine. Israel is butchering Palestine. Again,” tweeted musician James Kennedy. “Israeli soldier turned Hollywood’s Wonder Woman multimillionaire Gal Gadot sends meaningless thoughts and prayers as the Israeli apartheid regime she supports ethnically cleanses Palestinians and bombs Gazans in an open-air prison camp.”
“Reminder Gal Gadot served in the IDF for two years where she not only witnessed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine firsthand but also actively supported it,” wrote another user. “How can you advocate to stop the vicious cycle of terror when you are standing on the frontlines enabling it #FreePalestine.”
Gadot’s army service, as that of all Israelis, was mandatory.
The tweets come as rockets from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip continue to rain down on Israel, prompting retaliatory strikes by the Israeli military. Thursday afternoon saw a fresh barrage of more than 100 rockets launched at Tel Aviv and other cities in the center of the country.
The Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted about 90 percent of the Gaza-launched rockets targeting population centers in Israel.
Around one fifth of the 1,850 rockets over the past two days fell short of their target and landed within Gaza, the IDF said. More than 80 Palestinians have been killed by retaliatory Israeli airstrikes, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said.
According to the IDF, dozens of those killed were members of terrorists, some of whom were actively launching attacks on Israel when they were killed.
Others, including at least three children, were killed by errant rockets that fell short of their target, Israel and a Palestinian human rights group, Defense for Children, said.
Seven Israelis have been killed from rocket fire, including a soldier who was hit by an anti-tank missile, a five-year old boy, two elderly women, and an Arab Israeli and his daughter.
Other celebrities have come out with statements addressing the current conflict, the overwhelming majority of whom accused Israel of war crimes for defending itself against the rocket attacks.
Trevor Noah devoted nearly ten minutes on the The Daily Show to talking about it.
Supermodel Gigi Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, wrote on Instagram to her 66 million followers: “One cannot advocate for racial equality, LGBT & women’s rights, condemn corrupt & abusive regimes and other injustices yet choose to ignore the Palestinian oppression.”
Her sister, Bella, posted to her 41 million followers a cartoon of two women talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of the women asks, “So aren’t Israelis and Palestinians just fighting over religion?” to which the other woman responds: “They are not ‘fighting,’ Israelis are the oppressors and Palestinians are the oppressed and the situation is about anything but religion.”
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Malala expressed her “solidarity” with the Palestinians and called Israel’s actions a crime against humanity.
“After decades of oppression against Palestinians, we cannot deny the asymmetry of power and the brutality from Israeli airstrikes on women and children in Gaza,” she said.
Lena Headey, the British actor best known for her role as Cersei Lannister on “Game of Thrones,” retweeted multiple posts from an anti-Zionist writer including one with a picture of a boy holding a Palestinian flag and the accompanying text, “Zionist Israeli Apartheid”.
Another read: “This is not a Jewish state but an apartheid Zionist regime … this is a colonisation of ethnic cleansing upon an oppressed and imprisoned group of people.”
Actor Mark Ruffalo tweeted: “1500 Palestinians face expulsion in #Jerusalem. 200 protesters have been injured. 9 children have been killed. Sanctions on South Africa helped free its black people – it’s time for sanctions on Israel to free Palestinians. Join the call.”
Popstars including BDS overlord Roger Waters and Dua Lipa — who is dating the Hadids’ younger brother, Anwar — also posted anti-Israel posts. Halsey tweeted: “It is not ‘too complicated to understand’ that brown children are being murdered + people are being displaced under the occupation of one of the most powerful armies in the world. It is willful ignorance to conflate these simple horrors with religion + geopolitics.”
Malik, an actress and comedian who has starred in over a dozen Pakistani and Bollywood films, posted a series of tweets Tuesday celebrating the terror directed against Israel — including one that quoted Hitler as saying: “I would have killed all the Jews of the world … but I kept some to show the world why I killed them.”
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Malik also tweeted “#IronDome is doomed” with a laughing emoji, in an apparent reference to the fact that Israel’s missile defense system has been overwhelmed by rockets fired from Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The tweets had been taken down as of Wednesday, the report said.
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