Instagram, Bella Hadid spar over dad’s passport marked ‘Palestine’

Instagram on Tuesday apologized to supermodel Bella Hadid for removing a picture she posted of her father’s old passport, which listed his place of birth as “Palestine.”

“Instagram removed my story that only said ‘My baba And his birthplace of Palestine’ with a photograph of his American passport,” wrote Hadid on a post on her Instagram Story, according to Page Six. “Instagram exactly what part of me being proud of my father’s birth place of Palestine is ‘bullying, harassment, graphic or sexual nudity?’”

“Are we not allowed to be Palestinian on Instagram? This, to me, is bullying.”

Real estate developer Mohamed Hadid was born in Nazareth in November 1948. Under current US passport regulations, it appears that Palestine would not be an option as a place of birth for somebody born there after May 14, 1948.

A spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, told Page Six that the picture was removed in error and should have been allowed to remain on the site because the passport number had been blurred.

“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,” the company said.