Gal Gadot: I Show-Off My Israeli Pride In Response To Anti-Semitism

‘Wonder Woman’ star Gal Gadot Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer July 1, 2019

“Wonder Woman” star and international sweetheart Gal Gadot is always talking about Israel — the hummus! The people! The hand-to-hand combat training!

So. Is this some kind of public relations strategy, a journalist for the Israeli tabloid Walla asked Gadot this week? Perhaps a Zionist scheme?

“No!” Gadot said in Hebrew, shaking her head and laughing. “If anything, it’s just that I get so many anti-Semitic messages and reactions. It’s just — this is who I am. I believe we have no place to hide or lie.”

“Israel is very important to me,” she said.

“I wish for our country to really be in a good place, and that there will be quiet, stability, peace, and tranquility,” she went on, asked why she brings Israeli domestic and security issues to the forefront on her social media. “Because I believe in the end that all the people want that.”

“There are no people who want war, or for their children to go to the army, God forbid!” she said. “So I try to empower these messages — the good, and the desire for peace and quiet.”

And by the way, she explained to the Israeli reporter who had asked her about the “strategy” of talking about Israel to American press, Israeli paparazzi are more annoying than their American counterparts. “I think that in general, I’m more interesting to Israelis, so every place I go, it will be documented,” she said, explaining that in America she is mostly dogged by paparazzi while doing press for major films. But she likes speaking to Israeli press, she said — it’s nice knowing that her family and friends will see and understand everything she says, and it’s nerve-wracking, too.

“There’s nothing like talking in my mother tongue,” she smiled.

And now that she’s become close with American stars like Chris Pine and John Hamm, will she maintain connections with her Israeli friends?

“They are my sisters,” Gadot said, definitively, of her longtime Israeli friends. “They are the best the best the best. There is room for everyone.”

You can the whole interview in Hebrew, here:

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

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