Dior Didn’t Replace Bella Hadid With Israeli Model Due To Gaza War – How The Rumors Started

A new controversy has erupted on social media over the rumor that Dior replaced Bella Hadid with an Israeli model, due to the former’s comments on the Israel-Hamas war.

It all started with the release of the French fashion house’s new Christmas ad campaign featuring Israeli May Tager alongside actress Anya Taylor-Joy and other models.

In the past, one of the faces who starred in Dior campaigns was indeed Bella Hadid, whose contract with the French fashion house, however, has expired since March 2022, as AP notes citing a person familiar with the situation. The Israeli May Tager also participated in last year’s Christmas campaign of Dior and, like last year, this year the central figure of the French fashion house’s holiday advertisements is the actress Anya Taylor-Joy.

As the AP notes, Bella Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, has repeatedly made public comments critical of the Israeli government and supportive of the Palestinians in the years since she was named Dior’s makeup ambassador in 2016.

When Dior released its new holiday campaign in the past few days with Israeli Tager appearing in some of the ads, social media users tried to connect the two cases, implying that Bella Hadeen had been summarily kicked out of Dior because of the recent statement about the ongoing war.

“Dior replaced Bella Hadid with a model from ISRAEL in its latest campaign. This happened after Bella Hadid publicly supported Palestine,” said a post with more than 11,000 likes on X. A hashtag calling for a boycott of Dior also appeared on X.

But Hadid’s contract with Dior expired in March 2022, and was not renewed, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity. He did not say why the contract was not renewed, saying simply that it was a business decision. He also added that Hadid was replaced by several models for her Dior duties, none of whom were Tager.

And the Israeli started her collaboration with Dior from Christmas 2022. She was one of the many models in both Christmas campaigns, last year and this year, in which Taylor-Joy, who is its global ambassador, was the central figure Dior from 2021.

A similar claim that Bella Hadid was fired from Dior over her pro-Palestinian comments was circulated online in March 2021 – yet months later, she promoted Dior makeup for an event at the Cannes Film Festival.

The war on social media

All that, however, didn’t stop social media users from raving about Bella Hadid’s alleged replacement.

In their posts, supporters of Israel praised the Dior fashion house, while pro-Palestinians called for a boycott.

In addition, Tager’s Instagram account was flooded with Palestinian flags, slogans calling for the liberation of Palestine, and posts with Hadid’s name in all caps.

And the comments on the non-existent controversy and the fake news about Hadid’s replacement were endless:

“Palestinian beauty is on another level,” one post said. “This is the kind of beauty that represents freedom, resistance, love, strength and honor.”

Others wrote online that “At times like this, shooting an ad with an Israeli model while her country is exterminating the children of Gaza is just a sad joke,” “Dior just turned into a joke,” and “Dior chose murderers for the benefit of his campaign and now everything stinks of blood.”