The daughter of two Iraqi immigrants, Huda Kattan, never kept her antisemitism secret. But it only began attracting attention in recent weeks when the New York City-based Stop Don’t Shop watchdog reposted her bizarre rant on social media.
Kattan is the co-founder, sole owner, namesake, and the primary spokesperson for the Huda makeup company. Right now, the public is learning that the woman whose life’s work was to advance blurring techniques has antisemitic beliefs.
In the rant, Kattan moved her ballooning lips, echoing age-old libels:
Israel has been behind World War I, World War II, September 11, October 7. They allowed all this stuff to happen. Is this crazy? I saw something, I saw this many times. I saw that Netanyahu was warned about October 7 so many times… told their army to stand down for seven hours so that October 7 could happen so they can use it as an excuse… so it makes sense… no punishment… like no crime deserves this punishment, it’s just obvious, but they keep with the same rhetoric, bringing hostages home. What about the Palestinian hostages? There is thousands of the Palestinian hostages and they’ve been in your custody for so long. Children. What about all the pedophilia that Israel’s hiding and all the pedophiles that Israel has been hiding?
Echoing the Neo-Nazi “noticing” trope, Kattan continued:
Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Because what I’m seeing, especially on Meta they have hired people to hide all of this stuff. And the rate at which everything is coming out, they are not going to be able to hide all of this. They are not going to be able to monitor all of this.
Here, the billionaire switched to the Marxist revolutionary tropes:
And [with that] I will ask everybody to keep posting. Because we can only do this together. Like, the only way we can fight superpowers is as a people united. We are not going to be able to fight the evil systems that have been put in place, that have been manipulating the system for literally centuries… unless we do this together… it’s absolutely crazy. Like, I had a feeling, are they behind every world war? Yes! Behind September 11th? Absolutely! Look at it, they used it as a reason to go to war with Iraq! Afghanistan! To do what exactly? Did you guys know that they still take oil from Iraq? They still, to this day, monitor the banking system of Iraq! They have the right, like, over the Iraqi national security, Americans… more than Iraq does. Crazy. They built this oh, the system that’s put in place. Everything is going to come out. Everything. They are not going to be able to stop it. But we have to work together on that.
TikTok has pulled the video, but it’s been reposted by muckraking influencers and made mainstream media news cycle, prompting boycott calls.
Stop Antisemitism campaign urged followers to contact Sephora, the retailer that carries Huda, and ask it to sever its contact with the brand. The ex-Muslim feminist Yasmine Mohammad noted that Kattan’s is exactly the kind of rhetoric that led to the Holocaust and started a petition urging Sephora to drop her line.
This controversy reminds me of Dior’s firing of John Galliano. In February 2011, on the eve of Paris Fashion Week, The Sun published a video of the acclaimed British designer talking to a Jewish woman at a bar, declaring, “I love Hitler. People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed.”
Following the publication of the video, Natalie Portman, the Jewish actress who signed an endorsement contract with Dior, quit the brand, noting that Galliano’s “still-existing prejudices… are the opposite of all that is beautiful.” Soon after, Dior fired its master couturier. The gay designer lost a defamation suit and went into rehab for drug and alcohol addiction. Years later, he was hired by a less prestigious fashion house.
If drugs and alcohol likely hastened Galliano’s downfall, Kattan’s entire public persona is lying about Jews with a touch of blush. The Huda Beauty Instagram page is a compilation of tutorials by women who draw someone else’s face on their own, occasionally punctuated by assertions that Jews harvest organs and calls to boycott Israel.
Her Twitter account, however, is something entirely different. She stopped posting ads months ago and switched to 100% pure, unadulterated hate. The account is now dedicated to retweeting. It amplifies antizionist hoaxes like pictures of dying babies, rants about “Polish settlers” and calls for harassment of IDF soldiers.
The luxury makeup market is saturated with products. If Huda goes, another quality manufacturer will easily fill its niche. It’s a very competitive business heavily reliant on consumer vibes. The Dubai-based cosmetics company went out of its way to set itself as a fun brand, advertising smiling girls and hot pink hues.
Moreover, the beauty mogul fashioned herself into a kind of ambassador for Muslim women. She rarely uses white models, but hijabis are prominently featured in her ads. Her IG champions the beauty ideals of the Global South — and its causes. But lifting themes out of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and superimposing them with something as trivial as luxury cosmetics shines a negative light on the Islamic world. If I were a Muslim woman, I would be very upset.
Sephora signaled willingness to reconsider its relationship with Huda Beauty, stating:
Sephora is driven by its mission to create a welcoming and inclusive shopping experience for all. We recognize that comments from one of our brand partners have raised concerns and want to be clear: promoting hate, harassment, or misinformation does not align with our values or code of conduct.
It is worth noting that in 2012 Qatar bought a 1% holding in LVMH, the parent company of Sephora. The Gulf principality is sponsoring terrorism worldwide and currently hosting Hamas leadership.
Khattab is no stranger to controversy — in 2022, for instance, she settled a lawsuit about the use of banned ingredients, and in 2018, she promoted a wacky, medically flawed idea of female private parts lightning. She survived these scandals but appears to be hitting the panic button now.
The influencer recorded a video insisting that her statement was taken out of context and she’s not an antisemite. She elaborated that she learned about the Holocaust in school, which is why it’s crucial to her to accuse the Jewish state of genocide of Gazans.
I suppose that’s par for the course for these types of clarifications. And of course it happened to be completely in line with her previous retweets of memes depicting the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Hitler and “Zionism is the Holocaust” — the tweets produced by hardcore antisemitic influencers like Jackson Hinkle and Khalissee.
Nazi fashion apparel might be popular in Gaza, where the Hitler 2 store with mannequins dressed as terrorists was all the rage from the moment it opened in 2015 until the Israeli Defense Forces demolished it in the course of the current military action. Still, it’s unbecoming of a Western fashion brand to glamorize genocidal nutters. Not when they originate with inebriated punks like Galliano — who actually is a brilliant artist. Not when they come from social media tarts like Kattan. Sephora needs to protect its brand.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY