One Direction Member News: Zayn Malik's #FreePalestine Tweet Garners Death Threats
One Direction's Zayn Malik is now surrounded by death threats after sharing his political view on the current Israel-Gaza conflict via social media.
It has now been several weeks of Israel's deadly military attack on Gaza, and more than 1,000 Palestinians and 50 Israelis were killed.
The 21-year-old star took to his Twitter account on Sunday, July 27, to show his solidarity with the Palestinian cause and post a simple hashtag "#FreePalestine" to his 13 million followers. Since then, the controversial tweet has been retweeted and favorited 210,000 times.
— zaynmalik1D (@zaynmalik) July 28, 2014
Consequently, outraged Israelis immediately reacted to Malik's bold statement, threatening him that he will lose 1D fan base in Israel: "U have fans in #Israel. It broke me that one of my idols want me to die @benwinstone @harry_styles @onedirection [sic]." Also, there were much worse, hate-filled, life-threatening responses, such as "kill yourself" or "let me kill you."
The "Midnight Memories" hitmaker was actually brought up a Muslim, growing up in Bradford, Yorkshire. His mother Trisha, who was born in Bradford as well to a white British working class family, converted to Islam when she married Zayn's father, a British Pakistani, Yasser Malik. She also worked as a halal chef at a local primary school, making meals for Muslim children.
"I've always tried to learn as much as I can about my husband's religion and culture," Trisha told BBC in last December. "I made sure the children went to the mosque. Zayn has read the Koran three times."
Zayn Malik is certainly not the only celebrity who has stirred the Middle East controversy, as Rihanna tweeted the same hashtag earlier this month. However, she quickly deleted it and replaced with another tweet hours later. "Let's pray for peace and a swift end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! Is there any hope?...." she wrote.
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