Rihanna Deletes #FreePalestine Tweet, Social Media Explodes with Criticism

Rihanna tweeted "#FreePalestine" and speedily deleted it within minutes. She was, however, not successful in hushing up the tweet as some already took snapshots of her tweet. The #FreePalestine tweet was retweeted by almost 7,000 people and favourited by nearly 5,000 of them before she could delete it.

The singer presently has around 36.4M followers on Twitter. Several of them follow her Twitter activity quite religiously. That was why she probably could not manage to hide her tweet for 8 minutes. Rihanna apparently decided to be "politically correct" without taking any side. She posted another tweet where she asked for peace. "Let's pray for peace and a swift end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!" Rihanna tweeted. However, she seemed unsure of the possibilities of peace in the same tweet. "Is there any hope?" she wondered.

However, it was seemingly too late for the Barbadian singer to stop people on social media from criticising her. "Israel supporters made Rihanna delete this. Apparently, a #FreePalestine is too much for fascists," Thaher Pelaseyed wrote. Lobna Darwish wrote that even such a huge celebrity like Rihanna was not able to "speak up her mind freely when it comes to #FreePalestine." Some people like Nader asked Rihanna to explain who forced her to delete the tweet.

Hussain Sheikh did not care why Rihanna deleted the tweet. He was glad that "she at least tweeted it." Hot Mess thought that it was brave of the singer to tweet #FreePalestine even though she deleted it. "She knew people would see it and talk," he tweeted. Crazydil (WC Mode) asked Rihanna if she could call herself a "free person" if she was not able to say what she felt." Gülѕeɴ Mayęrs Δ$ΔΡ ‏called Rihanna "chicken-hearted" as she deleted the tweet. "When People with Power would start to Say STOP !! It's sure that The Israel's crimes would Stop !" she tweeted.

Earlier, NBA All-Star Dwight Howard apologised for a similar #FreePalestine tweet. He too deleted the tweet after a while like Rihanna. Calling it a "mistake," he said that he never "commented on international politics and never will."

HERE is a snapshot of the deleted tweet.

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au