Mia Khalifa Faces Brand Blowback for Insensitive Remarks on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Right now, the biggest news story in the world is the intense conflict that has broken out in Israel.

After a particularly violent year that saw increasing Israeli expansion and settler violence against Palestinians, Hamas is leading an invasion of Israel from the Gaza strip.

Thousands of people have died. Hundreds of people are missing or have been kidnapped, including children.

Media personality and former porn star Mia Khalifa’s comments have been so controversial that major brands, including Playboy, are cutting ties with her.

30-year-old Mia Khalifa was, just a few years ago, the most viewed porn star on the planet.

The Lebanese-American media personality has since retired from that industry. It appears that her next business partnerships aren’t ending on her terms, however.

Since Saturday morning, when Palestinian militants crossed into Israel alongside a rocket barrage, Khalifa has made numerous remarks on social media.

Playboy’s Centerfold platform (a sort of OnlyFans-lite with the Playboy brand behind it) has informed users via email that they are severing ties with Mia Khalifa.

“We are writing today to let you know of our decision to terminate Playboy’s relationship with Mia Khalifa, including deleting Mia’s Playboy channel on our creator platform,” the company wrote.

Sure enough, as of Tuesday morning, her page no longer appears on the platform.

“Over the past few days, Mia has made disgusting and reprehensible comments celebrating Hamas’ attacks on Israel,” Playboy wrote. “And the murder of innocent men, women and children.”

The email continued: “At Playboy, we encourage free expression and constructive political debate.” That’s debatable.

“But we have a zero tolerance policy for hate speech,” the infamous brand affirmed. “We expect Mia to understand that her words and actions have consequences.”

Within hours of the eruption of violence, Mia Khalifa began posting her thoughts. There is some nuance to them, but some of her statements crossed the line.

“If you can look at the situation in Palestine and not be on the side of Palestinians, then you are on the wrong side of apartheid and history will show that in time,” she wrote.

That is one of those tweets that would make perfect sense at almost any time. But while the vast majority of Palestinians are (and remain) non-combatant victims, her tweet did not sit will with people who were witnessing footage of the Hamas-led attacks.

“Can someone please tell the freedom fighters in Palestine to flip their phones and film horizontal,” Khalifa later wrote.

She also tweeted: “I can’t believe the Zionist apartheid regime is being brought down by guerrilla fighters in fake Gucci shirts – the biopics of these moments better reflect that.”

The somewhat glib critique of phone camera angles was, suffice it to say, inappropriate.

To be clear, Khalifa did later clarify that her “statement in no way shape or form is enticing spread of violence.”

She wrote: “I specifically said freedom fighters because that’s what the Palestinian citizens are… fighting for freedom every day.”

Khalifa hit back at corporate rejection, noting that she wants to see “4k footage of my people braking down the walls of the open air prison” as they “freed themselves form apartheid.”

She also wrote: “I’m from LEBANON, are you insane for expecting me to be on the side of colonialism you f–king weirdo.”

There is some nuance here, without a doubt. This is an upsetting and complex situation with many, many victims.

One can sympathize — and, arguably, absolutely must sympathize — with victims of apartheid and what human rights groups are calling “peacetime genocide.”

And there are now thousands of new victims, between retaliatory bombardment and Israel cutting off electricity and food to Gaza.

But there are also hundreds of dead children. Notably, music festival attendees faced death and kidnapping during the Hamas-led strikes. None of those are IDF. None of those are policy-makers.

A dead child is always a tragedy. No baby is a military target. We can (and should) talk about settler violence and apartheid and massive retaliation all day. But when children are slaughtered, maybe it’s not a time to be crass on Twitter?

Mia Khalifa Faces Brand Blowback for Insensitive Remarks on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.