Mohamed Hadid, father of supermodels Gigi and Bella, has likened Israel to the Third Reich in a social media post branded an expression of "pure hate".
Hadid, a millionaire real-estate developer, posted - and deleted - an infographic on his Instagram account that drew direct parallels between Nazi concentration camps and Israel's treatment of Palestinian people in Gaza.
The infographic, which spliced half of a red Nazi flag with half of the Israeli flag, appeared to equate the Nazi regime with the Israeli state, claiming the former was “founded on Aryan supremacy” and the latter was “founded on Jewish supremacy”.
While the Nazi Party's "signature method [of murder]" was the gas chambers, Israel's own preferred method, according to Hadid' post, is "carpet bombing".
“And both added and labeled the victims as terrorists,” Hadid wrote in the caption accompanying the image.
Hadid, 74, published the post on Saturday before quickly removing it. The luxury property mogul, who is based in Los Angeles, was born into a Palestinian family in Nazareth, in what is now northern Israel, in 1948.
He has stated previously that his family were expelled from their home in the city of Safed after Jewish refugees from Germany and Poland arrived in Israel, and that his relatives then became refugees themselves.
Yaari Cohen from the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted a thread on X debunking the points of comparison between Nazis and Israel that were alleged by Hadid’s post.
Referring to the false claim that “Israel was founded on Jewish supremacy”, Cohen said: "False. In May 1948, following the UN vote that split the land of Israel in two, Israel immediately welcomed the vote and issued the Declaration of Independence [which]
included a call to neighbouring Arab states for peace. The next morning all neighbouring Arab states attacked Israel...Israel is by definition a country of all its citizens - no matter race, ethnicity gender, or religion."
Turning to the carpet bombings claim, Cohen said: "False again, Israel does not carpet bomb. Israel only uses targetted strikes in accordance with international laws of warfare."
Summing up his thoughts on Hadid's post, Cohen said: “This is not some shrewd complicated political stance. This is just pure hate. Shame on you.”
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