After Yasmine heard about Hamas’s brutal attacks on Israel, she started posting on Instagram. As a Yemeni Muslim whose husband has family in the West Bank, she wanted to remind people of Israel’s decades-long oppression of Palestine. “I was just thinking of the civilians because that’s who is suffering,” she says. In her Stories, Yasmine featured a photo of a Palestinian raising his country’s flag atop an Israeli tank, as well as a screenshot of a post on X reading, “Gaza just broke out of prison.” She works as an aesthetician at a salon in Columbus, Ohio, and later that day, Yasmine’s manager sent her a DM urging her not to post anything about the war on social media. The manager explained that the issue is particularly sensitive given that the salon’s owner is Jewish and her husband had two friends taken hostage by Hamas. “If a Jewish client saw that they would not want to book w you,” the manager wrote. “Religion and politics are no no’s in general on business pages.” That evening, Yasmine deleted the posts from her Instagram, where she mostly features her makeup, brow work, and skin care. She then made an effort to stick with less controversial messaging, like “How to Get Through the Day: For My Palestinian Friends, Activists and Fellow Arabs.”
The following week, Yasmine — who, like others interviewed for this story, asked to use a pseudonym to avoid further professional repercussions — had a performance review with her manager. The salon owner unexpectedly showed up...
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