Kylie Jenner has swiftly deleted an Instagram Story in which she appeared to endorse Israel in its current war against Palestine. The Story was a re-share from an account called Stand With Us (@standwithus) and read “now and always, we stand with the people of Israel”.
Since she uploaded the now-deleted Story, Jenner, who has 400 million followers has received a wave of pro-Palestine comments on her most recent Posts.
Jenner’s pro-Palestine fans then took to her most recent Post, uploaded four days ago, to vent their frustrations.
One user simply wrote, “🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸”, a collection of Palestinian flags.
“#Freepalestine” penned another.
“#UnfollowKylieJenner”, wrote a third.
Jenner isn’t the only A-list celebrity to openly support Israel.
Bruno Mars, who had to cancel his concert in Israel after it declared it was at war with Palestine on Sunday morning, Australian time, also shared a statement about standing with Israel.
“Dear customers, Bruno Mars concert scheduled to take place tonight is cancelled,” said an Instagram statement from production company Live Nation.
“We stand with the residents of Israel, IDF fighters and the security forces in these difficult moments.”
Mars was set to perform another concert in Tel Aviv, the nation’s capital city after his first earlier in the week.
Mars has not yet responded to the cancellation directly.
In case you missed it, Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, launched a surprise attack against Israeli military forces and civilians on Sunday morning Australian time, launching a volley of rockets.
Per the Sydney Morning Herald, 600 Israelis were killed in the initial attack, which included civilians, with a further 1,500 wounded.
Israeli’s counter-offensive airstrikes are thought to have killed 313 people in Gaza, including 20 children, with another 2,000 likely injured.
Palestine has been an occupied territory since it was invaded by Israel in 1948. This is the largest-scale resistance Israel has seen from the dispossessed people.
In response, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “we are at war and we will win it … We will defeat them to death and take revenge for this black day”.
The geopolitical issue is an extremely polarised one.
If you’d like to learn more about Israel’s invasion of Palestine and the Palestinian resistance, Al Jazeerah has on the ground correspondents reporting what is happening in a live blog, as well as a bunch of explainers and opinion pieces that shed light on the context of the attack.
This article has been updated to include information about civilian and military casualties on both sides.
