As Hollywood celebrates the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Potter film, Emma Watson is back in the limelight – but not for her acting.
By Pesach Benson, United With Israel
Actress Emma Watson, best known for playing Hermione Granger in the series of Harry Potter movies, threw her support behind the Palestinians with an Instagram post published on Monday.
The post featured a photo of a pro-Palestinian rally in which people held signs saying “Free Palestine,” “Hands off Jerusalem” and “Save Sheikh Jarrah.” Overlaid over the image were the words, “Solidarity is a verb.”
It was accompanied by a message quoting Sara Ahmed, a British-Australian scholar whose area of study includes critical race theory, feminist theory and postcolonialism.
Ahmed’s quote, sent to Watson’s 64 million Instagram followers, said, “Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.”
It also tagged an Instagram account by the name @badactivistcollective, which describes itself as “A collective of change-makers, artists, story-tellers and activists dismantling perfectionism & fighting for liberation for people & the planet.” That account has 32,9000 followers.
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As of mid-day Tuesday, Watson’s post has more than 428,000 likes.
Watson is also known as a feminist activist. According to Ynet, her Instagram account is reportedly run not by the actress herself, but rather by “an anonymous Feminist Collective.” Ynet noted, however, that it is unlikely the post would have been run without Watson’s approval.
The post led to a flood of people commenting by repeatedly typing the letters PS or IL, the internet country codes designated for the Palestinian Authority and Israel respectively.
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