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YSL Criticized for Featuring Palestinian Rapper, ‘Vile Antisemite’ Saint Levant in New Campaign
Saint Levant in the new YSL video campaign for “Saint Laurent Sushi Park Paris.” Photo: Screenshot
The French luxury fashion house Saint Laurent (YSL) is facing backlash for featuring Palestinian rapper Saint Levant, who has expressed support for violence against Israelis, in a campaign that debuted on Monday for the brand’s new restaurant.
On Monday night, YSL premiered a new video campaign for “Saint Laurent Sushi Park Paris,” an omakase dining experience in Paris opening on Feb. 21 that YSL developed in collaboration with Chef Peter Park of Sushi Park in Los Angeles. The partnership marks the debut of Sushi Park’s first permanent location outside of Los Angeles. In the video campaign, Saint Levant, whose real name is Marwan Abdelhamid, acts as a driver that takes passengers, including Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon, to the new restaurant.
YSL posted the video on its social media accounts, and the comments sections quickly filled with pro-Israel supporters vowing to boycott the brand for featuring who they described as a known antisemite in its new campaign. Social media users shared the hashtag “boycottysl,” and the organization StopAntisemitism asked the brand “Saint Levant is a vile antisemite – why are you partnering with him?” On YSL’s X account, one user wrote, “what are you thinking? these are antisemites representing your company.”
“You guys partner with Jew haters?” said one X user. Another wrote, “ANTISEMITISM is the evil. Stop hatred!”
Saint Levant has French, Algerian, Palestinian, and Serbian roots. The 24-year-old was born in Jerusalem, grew up in the Gaza Strip, and moved to Amman, Jordan, at the age of seven. During a performance in November 2024 in Amsterdam, Saint Levant publicly applauded violent antisemitic attacks in the city that targeted fans of the Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv. “Quick little shoutout to our Moroccan brothers for what they did the other day,” the rapper told the audience at his concert. “Because it’s not the first time that they come to a land that’s not theirs and start some s—t. So thank you for taking care of business.”
His comments were criticized by a pro-Israel supporter on TikTok who accused Saint Levant of promoting “gross anti-Jewish rhetoric.” The rapper responded by again repeating his support for the premeditated and coordinated attack against Israelis in Amsterdam. He told the pro-Israel activist, “keep crying,” and wrote, “Thank you Morocco.”
Last month, Saint Levant attended a fashion show for YSL’s men’s winter 2025 collection. In 2023, he was chosen as Dior’s first fragrance ambassador for the Middle East and in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar that year he said about his activism: “Everything I do is really focused and based on the Palestinian cause and struggle. It’s 80 years of occupation, oppression, displacement, and ethnic cleansing ”
YSL has previously collaborated with outspoken critics of Israel, including model Bella Hadid for its fall 2024 collection. Singer Dua Lipa, who has accused Israel of “genocide,” is the face of the YSL Beauty fragrance Libre Flowers & Flames, which launched in the summer of 2024, but she has also promoted other items for the brand.
The post YSL Criticized for Featuring Palestinian Rapper, ‘Vile Antisemite’ Saint Levant in New Campaign first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.