Gigi & Bella Hadid's Father, Mohamed Hadid Tells The Story Of His Upbringing As A Child & More

Mr Hadid let's start with your own story uh the story that your family passed down to you uh about the very early times of the occupation and actually where you born I was born in uh Nazareth Palestine in 1948 I was born about 17 18 ft from where Jesus was conceived uh two years prior uh my parents uh and few other neighbors have gone down to uh uh to the harbor saying that there are some refugees coming from uh Jewish families coming from uh Europe our house that we have uh uh we've had for hundreds of years my my parents and my my uncles and we surrounded us uh we had two family two Jewish families that we picked up at uh the high uh uh Harbor my mother's home was in Nazareth when she had me she went to uh to her mother to to have me when she was about to have have me they go month before so I was there uh I was born and uh we went back and I was N9 days old with my sister sow who was uh at the to Bar year and a half two years old uh went back to suffed when we arrived to safad apparently safad was uh completely uh or partially uh taken over by Jewish population my mother came to to the gates of my our uh Community which was like more of a hied quarters uh to get into the house and we were locked out and she asked if she can have a uh a blanket for me as was getting a bit cold and they wouldn't even let her into the house to take a single photo or album she wanted to take with her of her children when they were very young or family pictures or her pictures where already got when she got married so that's kind of painful but what what uh what caught my attention is the the uh what happened this time that people were traveling from out it touched me because I felt so uh attached to it because of what my mother have gone through I didn't realize it because I wasn't I was a a child I was a n days old child but so I wasn't really uh I didn't even understand what happened I didn't even know how we got from from uh suffed to uh the uh refugee camps in Syria and then on to in our life to to Damascus and so on so this is when I saw that it touched me deeply to see how difficult my mother had to to go through to get me alive to at least to a refugee camp uh your daughters Bella and gig they shared their opinion about what happens in Palestine on their social media uh and they look sensitive on the matter as well my my kids always have followed ER their intuition when it comes to human torture to human nature human what happens to the humans on Earth from uh the disaster in Turkey to uh uh the famine in uh in Africa and the uh homelessness in Southeast Asia they have been involved in these things over the years uh building schools for uh through uh UNICEF and so on so there always been a a uh humanitarian issue in their in their blood nothing to do with just being Palestinian Palestinian just because just happened to be that they are their blood is uh I am they have Palestinians and they feel very close to the Palestinian cause uh they heard about my story do you or your daughters because of your position in the Palestinian issue get any criticism or blow back from your uh ideas or views uh we get threats we have uh you know I I get a lot of uh hate mail uh they uh they actually published our phone numbers on uh on online and we start getting uh hate uh phone calls and uh threats uh from death threats to uh uh ma major attacks and uh they lash at us we had to change our numbers and so on so it's a it's very painful to see that from people who are the the only the only people that took them in which Palestinians it took these families into Palestine to make a state out of their state While others were expelling them from Europe uh and uh from Germany uh to Eastern Europe uh Spain everywhere else yet we took them in and we we invite them into our our our uh our homeland uh and I feel uh I always felt very uh uncomfortable but it's not apparently this is a a uh an agenda they have which is the propaganda that that somehow we are the uh uh we are the evil which actually the opposite is true that we were the we were the Kinder of the uh kindest of the people who are were there when they needed us most and when people start to speak about Palestine anti-Semitism especially in the west is a big deal what do you think of anti-Semitism well the word is European phenomena they they use it themselves anti-Semitism because that was what they used to use in in in Eastern Europe and and the West against uh against uh the uh anybody that came from that part of the world which is I'm a Semite so I cannot be anti- me so they can they never can say I'm anti-semitic because I am Semitic origin I am I was born in the land of Galilee I was born in the land of Jesus I was born in the land of where Moses came to from Egypt so it's not like a and where we we abrahamic family we were they were cousins we always felt that uh the Jews and the Jews uh you we have to learn Judaism as as Muslims we have we learned the tat we learned the uh the uh Christianity as a Bible we and then be we be became Muslim by learning the Quran the three religions came together they might not feel that way that they have their own God but we believe that we have one God and the one God for all the three religions so cannot be anti them and they can't be anti us being a refugee borning a refugee since then what is the most painful thing that you remember the most important my mother at one time her her wish was to be buried and next to her mother's uh body graveyard in Nazareth and we couldn't get her to go there they won't let us take her body there and the same thing with my father and the same thing with my grandmother my grandmother we had she wanted to be as close as possible to to Palestine we we buried her in on the island of roads in a in a in a mosque graveyard that my great grandfather as brother uh have built in in roads so that's as close as we can to to have her close to Palestine and uh so she died and we buried her there my mother she was buried next to my father in alingon Virginia so these are very painful times for me as I wish I can be Buri I can be buried where I was born and these kind of things we can never happen no one should be allowed to feel that pain that cannot never come back home where he was born or never come back dead or alive