For Prada, praising a ‘Jew hunt’ appears to be fashionable

Much of today’s antisemitism may be shrouded in a cloak of “compassion for Palestinians” and/or as “opposition to the actions of the Israeli government,” but the frightening reality is that Jew-hate continues to increase and be normalised.

Just last week it emerged that a leading fashion brand is comfortable having a close association with a “celebrity” – and I use the word loosely – who has publicly expressed overt Jew-hate.

Leading fashion house Prada has appointed as one of its brand ambassadors, a Palestinian rapper who openly praised the violent targeting of Israeli fans in Amsterdam in November 2024, which participants themselves described as a “Jodenjacht” – “Jew hunt”.  And the brand  has – as the law would say – “form” in this regard, because, a few years ago it appointed another brand ambassador with a distinctly unfriendly opinion of Israel.

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In 2022 Prada appointed Harry Potter star Emma Watson as a brand ambassador and the “face” of its then new fragrance, Paradoxe. Although this came after the actor had allegedly expressed fiercely anti-Israel views in Instagram posts, I think we can forgive the Italian fashion house for appointing her.

Just.

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In her role as Hermione Granger, Watson was  part of the Harry Potter franchise that was one of the hottest cultural phenomena of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In 2022, Watson was all grown up. And with her post-Hermione pixie-cut and a few minor film roles under her belt, she appeared to be heading for stardom.

Like the Harry Potter franchise, Prada was also flourishing. After 80-odd years of languishing virtually unremarked upon outside Italy, a new generation of the family at the helm brought an achingly cool sensibility, blending opulence and sporty edginess that exploded onto Planet Fashion and transformed it into one of the hottest brands on earth.

And – like Harry  Potter — it was one of the era’s cultural icons. It was just about understandable, therefore, that if Prada disapproved of her opinions, it would hold its nose and overlook Watson’s anti-Israel posts which the fashion brand could attribute to her youth or naiveite. And which I would suggest may be attributable to the fact that on the Harry Potter set she met demonstrable Israelophobes such as Miriam Margolyes and the late Alan Rickman.

But when we consider its newest “brand ambassador” – a Palestinian singer-songwriter named Saint Levant – we see no shining promise or cultural phenomenon which would at least allow us to understand – if not forgive – Prada’s decision.

Like that other Israel-hater Bob Vylan, whose name insultingly parodies the Jewish Nobel laureate Bob Dylan, Saint Levant’s name is also a feeble joke. It combines the “Saint” of St Laurent – providing a tenuous fashion link – with “Levant” which is where he is from – the bit of the Middle East at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean where Jews have lived continuously since Biblical Times. The “Levant” is also the region from which Palestinians – or their extremist Islamist puppet-masters and funders – would like to evict the Jews. But unlike Watson, who was a key part of an iconic franchise, the rapper Saint Levant’s main claim to fame – apart from a single song which gained a large number of streams on Spotify – appears to be his on-stage appreciation of those who took part in the “Jew-hunt” in Amsterdam in November 2024, when Israeli and Jewish fans leaving the AJAX ground were targeted by a violent mob in a premeditated and violent attack.

Or as he put it from the stage in Amsterdam: “A quick little shout-out to our Moroccan brothers for what they did the other day… because it’s not the first time that they come to a land that’s not theirs and start some sh*t… thanks for taking care of business.”

It’s not just that Saint Levant is a supporter of the Palestinian cause and appears to believe that Jerusalem and Haifa belong to “Palestine”. It’s not just that he may be in favour of annihilating the planet’s one Jewish state. It’s not even that he holds the entirely delusional idea that Jews are in a land that is not theirs. It is that such an avowedly divisive, clearly anti-Jewish figure seems an acceptable choice of “brand ambassador” for a brand which a decade ago pledged to be “more sensitive” to issues of racism. It did so in 2016 amid accusations of anti-black racism over its “Pradamalia” line which featured figures that allegedly resembled “black-face” or  “sambo” caricatures.

After the global outrage provoked by that lapse, and the promises and pledges that followed, one might have thought that the brand would be sensitive to minorities; that it might think hard about avoiding giving offence to a minority.

Yet in 2022, it appointed Watson, and now Prada has appointed as its newest “brand ambassador” a man who actively endorsed what its own participants at the time described as a “Jew-hunt”. So clearly anti-Jewish racism doesn’t count for Prada.

At all.