Bella Hadid is no fan of Donald Trump’s travel ban.
The 20-year-old model’s own father, Mohamed Hadid, was able to move to the US as a refugee so many years ago — but now, she fears, it’s much harder for people from the Middle East to follow a similar path.
Covering the October issue of Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Bella not only shares her disapproval of the travel ban, but voices that she finds the President’s actions ‘crazy’.
‘My dad was a refugee,’ Bella told the magazine after her Venice photoshoot with photographer Victor Demarchelier. ‘He came from Palestine to America when he was a baby.
Mohamed was born in 1948 in Nazareth (which was then Palestine but has since become a part of Israel). As a child, he moved with his family to Damascus, Syria — but upon later returning to Israel, Mohamed’s father Anwar learned he was expelled.
The months that followed were tumultuous, with both of Mohamed’s parents living as refugees. They eventually moved to Lebanon, where Anwar worked for the US government-funded international news agency Voice of America.
They finally moved to America when Mohamed was 14, and he grew up to be a real estate mogul and father of five (including two supermodels) — a life story many would say is the American dream.
But now his daughter Bella is troubled that others will be unable to follow in his footsteps.
‘Thankfully, he was able to come, but it was very hard and now it’s probably 100 times harder,’ she said. ‘It makes me sad that power is getting taken from a lot of people and they’re not able to make a new life for their children and their families.’
What’s more, she’s baffled by the fact that seemingly a single person — Trump — has been able to unilaterally make that call.
‘It’s crazy to me that one person can tell you whether or not you can have a better life,’ she said.
This isn’t the first time she has shared her thoughts on the travel ban. In January, she joined protesters #NoBanNoWall march in New York City.
With her sister Gigi, 22, she walked down the streets of Manhattan holding up signs, including one that read ‘We are all humans’ and listed several religions.
‘I just wanted to stand up for what I felt was right and I really didn’t care if I was with 100,000 other people because, with or without security, I wanted to go and stand for something I believe in,’ she said. ‘Nobody was even looking.’
Interestingly, though, the Hadids have gone head-to-head with Trump before — but the first time, it was over real estate.
In 1987, Donald and Mohamad squabbled over a piece of property in Aspen, which had gone into foreclosure.
Trump had put down money to buy the property so he could build a hotel on it — but Mohamed found a loophole, paying off a debt on the site to get the land himself.
‘Trump still claims that no one has ever beat him in a deal, but that’s not true anymore. I beat Trump,’ Hadid told Regardie’s.
Trump tried to sue Hadid, but the latter developer just saw his profile rise, and went on to build a Ritz-Carlton and Silver Circle Ice Rink, and run the redevelopment of the Continental Inn, in Aspen.
By Daily Mail