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Real estate mogul Mohamed Hadid apologizes after linking Israel to US police brutality

Los Angeles real estate mogul Mohamed Hadid apologizes for post linking Israel to police brutality in United States.

By Benjamin Kerstein, Algemeiner

Prominent Los Angeles real estate developer Mohamed Hadid apologized on Sunday for linking Israel to police violence in the United States against people of color.

Hadid, who is the father of supermodels Gigi and Bella Hadid, and is of Jordanian-Palestinian descent, posted an image on Instagram showing an American policeman kneeling on the neck of an African-American man while embracing an Israeli soldier doing the same to a Palestinian.

Mohamed Hadid’s original Instagram post linking Israel to police violence in the United States against people of color.

The original poster of the image wrote “two sides of the same coin” over it.

The pose echoed that seen in the now infamous video of a Minneapolis policeman kneeling on George Floyd’s neck until he died, which has set off massive and often violent protests against police brutality across the U.S.

Hadid apologized by posting an image on Instagram of an Israeli soldier and an elderly Palestinian man holding hands, and referenced the shooting over the weekend of an autistic Palestinian by Israeli police. An investigation into that incident is ongoing.

Hadid’s statement read in part, “Shooting an unarmed young man that has Autism and killing him hurt me deeply. If my remark came off with Anti-Semitism toward the Jewish people I do apologize.”

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“I think it was a wrong time for me to be angry about what happened in Jerusalem yesterday,” he added. “You are right to be upset.”

“Love and peace and coexistence is the answer,” Hadid asserted.

Model and singer Dua Lipa, who is dating Hadid’s son Anwar, also sought to draw a connection between Israel and U.S. police brutality, posting an image of a man being arrested by Israeli soldiers, under which was written, “While everybody’s in the mood to talk about human rights, this is what happens EVERYDAY in Palestine.”

“The big bad tough guys of the #IDF thoroughly enjoy beating and shooting children,” the original poster added. He also said that Israelis are “fake” Jews, a common anti-Semitic claim.

The post has since been taken down. Lipa has not apologized thus far.

Claims linking the actions of American law enforcement officers to Israel are disseminated by an ongoing organized campaign called “Deadly Exchange,” which posits that racist police tactics in the U.S. are inspired by their Israeli counterparts.

Critics say that this is a blood libel and responsible for inciting incidents of anti-Semitic violence.

In response to the Democratic Socialists of America’s BDS national working group’s accusations on this issue last week, some critics expressed outrage to the Algemeiner.

B’nai B’rith International said, “This is a case of exploiting the tragic and tense situation in Minneapolis to advance the motives of the BDS movement to demean and delegitimize Israel.”

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Rabbi Abraham Cooper — associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center — said that, similar to previous attempts to exploit such incidents, “non-existent dots were connected” to portray “the Palestinians as people of color fighting white Israel. … We Jews know all about antisemites connecting non-existent dots to denigrate our people.”