Gal Gadot Picture Yanked From Lebanese Designer’s Instagram After Backlash
A post deleted by Lebanese designer Elie Saab. Image by Instagram
Gal Gadot Image by Getty
(JTA) — The fashion studio of the Lebanese designer Elie Saab deleted from Instagram a picture of Gal Gadot amid rebuke over its ties to the Israeli actress.
The image of Gadot, who starred in last year’s action thriller “Wonder Woman,” in a blue sash dress by Saab was accompanied by a description of the former Israel Defense Forces combat trainer as “flawless,” the BBC on Friday reported.
Saab’s Instagram post saw some people share their frustration that a former member of the Israeli army would be promoted by the designer.
A post deleted by Lebanese designer Elie Saab. Image by Instagram
Gadot was wearing the dress to the National Board of Review awards in New York Thursday, where she and director Patty Jenkins received the Spotlight Award for their work on “Wonder Woman.”
The deleting of Saab’s picture has drawn a mixed reaction on social media. While one user praised the decision to remove the post, another called the whole debacle “shameful”.
“I love and respect Elie Saab, but is he really happy an Israeli actress wore a dress he designed?” asked one user, the Lebanese journalist Heba Bitar, on Twitter.
In 2017, her superhero blockbuster was banned from cinemas in Lebanon, among several other Arab countries amid protests over her casting as the title character and complaints by Islamists that it featured immodest images of women generally.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
