Former Miss Iraq isn't afraid to salute Israel, 'I want to be on the good side'
"Israel is the only one standing against the terrorists," says Sarah Idan, former Miss Iraq and ardent Israel supporter.
Yair Eizenberg
Israel Hayom
Sep 30, 2024
Sarah Idan fled Iraq to the United States after representing Iraq in Miss Universe in 2017.
Sarah Idan pulls out her phone. "Look, this is a video from two days ago," she tells me as we meet in a friend's apartment in Los Angeles. She doesn't feel safe meeting anywhere else, not even in her own home. When I asked her about the source of her concern, she showed me the video she recorded this week.
"Stop following me," Sarah's frightened voice can be heard from behind the camera pointed at a man with an Arab appearance, sitting in a large pickup truck and smoking while looking at her maliciously. "He followed me from my house," she explains, "I even made different turns to check if he was really following me, and only when I saw that he was going everywhere I was going I started recording."
She describes how her heart was racing at those moments, thinking he might pull out a gun and kill her in the middle of the street, and recounts that only when more and more passersby gathered around them and threatened to call the police if he didn't drive away – did the man flee the scene.
Q: Who do you think sent him?
"I don't know. That's the thing, I have no idea, but it's not the first time. It happens all the time. I always have to look over my shoulder. This is my life, especially after October 7. It has definitely intensified since then: the strange activities, the cars that come and park near the apartment, the people standing there watching me. I don't know why. Maybe it's to try to scare me or something."
Q: Do you fear for your life?
"If I'm going to die, I'm going to die. It can't get worse than that. I should have been dead a long time ago."
Q: Explain this to me. You're not Israeli, not Jewish. How are you willing to continue dealing with this and sacrifice your life for Israel?
"It's not for Israel – it's for the free world. There's God's side, the good side, and there's the evil side. The people who hate Israel – the Islamists, the communists, the fascists, all these crazy people – they are, you know, against the free world and free will. Many people are mistaken when they think that everything I do is just for Israel. It's not. It's because I know that Israel is the only one standing against the terrorists, against the crazy people. So yes, I want to be on the side of the good."
Saddam and I
Idan (34), dressed in an elegant designer dress and wearing shiny Gucci heels, fits perfectly into the Hollywood landscape visible from the window. We're sitting in the penthouse of Tomer Shmulevich, an Israeli producer living in Los Angeles who was responsible for Idan's visit to Israel after October 7. Below us, luxury cars speed between the well-manicured trees and magnificent houses of Beverly Hills in the City of Stars, light-years away from where she grew up.
"I grew up in the early 90s under Saddam Hussein's rule and under severe sanctions," she recounts. "Sometimes there was no electricity at all, and sometimes only for three hours a day. Same with water rationing. Food was barely available.
"The bread, which was hard as a rock, my mother would tell us to dip in tea so we could chew it. Fruits were a luxury. I remember one day, I got a banana and took it with me to school, and all the girls were in shock. 'Oh my God, she's holding a banana, she must be really rich!'"
Q: Did you share it with them?
"Yes, they wanted to taste what a banana was like, so I cut it into pieces. Those were really tough times."
Life in Iraq during those days included not only abject poverty but also constant fear. "On every street, there was an intelligence officer who had lists of all the residents on that street, and from time to time, he would interrogate them. Saddam Hussein would kill entire families if someone from them said something negative about him. You'd wake up in the morning, and people had simply disappeared. So we lived in fear."
Cut off from the outside world, Iraqi citizens received their information directly from the regime's propaganda. Only rarely did they manage to consume content that didn't praise the dictator. "I would stay up at night because, between four and six in the morning, the opposition in Iraq would manage to broadcast a radio program, where I got information about what was really happening."
Q: As a child, did you know what was happening in the Western world? Did you read "Harry Potter" or watch Disney movies like children in the rest of the world?
"All we had was a TV with three channels, and all three were under Saddam Hussein's complete control. Sometimes, they broadcast movies from the outside world on these channels, but they are edited so badly that you can't understand what is happening in them. They would just cut out entire sections."
This memory, like many others from the Saddam era, makes her chuckle derisively. "Once they broadcast the movie 'Titanic,' but only years later did I discover how the Titanic sank because they ended the movie before the scene where Jack and Rose sleep together – and that scene happens before the collision with the iceberg!"
In a world where every piece of information was carefully filtered, where the government had a firm grip on what its citizens knew or thought, Idan, a little girl at the time, was educated like the rest of Iraq's children to hate Israel. "We were taught that there's a country of Jews that hates Iraq, and everywhere it was written 'Death to America, Death to Israel,'" she recounts. "On Thursdays, we would stand in the schoolyard to sing songs about liberating Palestine."
But hatred for the "Little Satan" – Israel – was only part of the story. Because more than Israel, she and her friends grew up with hatred for the "Big Satan" – the US. "We were taught that the Americans want to kill us all. After September 11, everyone went out to the streets to celebrate, and there were fireworks as if something happy had just happened and not a terrible disaster," she describes the period leading up to the Second Gulf War, which changed the face of the country.
In March 2003, US President George W. Bush gave the signal for the start of the war, at the end of which Iraq would be liberated from Saddam Hussein, a moment that would be recorded as one of the most significant in the history of the Middle East.
"I was 13 when the Americans entered Iraq," Idan recalls. "I was playing soccer in the street with friends, and suddenly, a convoy of military vehicles appeared. My mind exploded. It looked like an alien invasion. They had weapons and technology we had never seen before. It was a complete shock. My friends and I just froze in place."
"We thought they were going to kill us, but then a soldier came out of the tank's roof and started waving hello to us, and then more soldiers came out smiling and started handing out candies and flowers to the children with notes written in Arabic saying, 'We are here to help you, not to kill you.'"
"I remember after that I ran home and shouted, 'The Americans are here! The Americans are here!' but no one believed me. They thought I was crazy. My parents, my neighbors – no one knew anything about the Americans invading Iraq until that moment. The whole world knew except for us."
Adar and I
After the American forces invaded Baghdad, the hope for change gradually gave way to a new terror. Following the fall of Saddam's Sunni regime, chaos spread through the streets, and the situation in the city worsened.
Terror groups like Al-Qaeda and other Shiite militias took control of large parts of the city, turning the area into an ongoing battlefield. Ordinary citizens like Idan and her family found themselves trapped between American forces and terror organizations.
"They used us as human shields. There was a school behind our house where they placed anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot at the Americans. We knew that at any moment, we could be accidentally bombed in retaliation. Two years after the invasion, one of the Shiite militias took control of our neighborhood and left a rifle bullet outside our door, with a letter saying we had to leave because we were Sunnis. In the morning, my father told me to pack, and we drove for hours from Iraq to Syria."
Even in Syria, the situation was far from safe for the Idan family: "We lived in a Palestinian refugee camp, which was full of gangs and extreme Islamists. The Palestinians in the camp would beat me and my sister when we walked around without wearing a hijab. Men kidnapped women on the street and raped them."
After two years in Syria, things in Baghdad calmed down a bit, and Idan returned to Iraq and began working for the American military. "Before we went to Syria, I saw an ad in the newspaper that said if you work for a year with the American military, you can apply for a green card. That's all I dreamed of. I immediately went to the checkpoint near my house and asked to work with them."
Q: Brave girl.
"I wanted to fly out of Iraq. Hell, I would have done anything for it, but the soldiers asked me how old I was, and when I said 15, they told me I couldn't work with them because I was too young and to come back when I was 18."
Q: And you came back?
"Yes, three years later. I went there on my birthday, applied, and was hired to work at the same checkpoint."
For two years, she worked with the American military. She served as an interpreter, checked passersby at the checkpoint, and survived several suicide bombers who exploded near her. Finally, she received the coveted green card and flew off to her new life in the land of unlimited possibilities. Initially, she settled in Texas alongside American soldiers she had met during her military service. Eventually, she decided to pursue her dream and flew to Los Angeles to study music.
With a music career ahead of her, she created music for an Egyptian film, and her future looked promising, but then a turning point occurred in her life. Her sister happened to hear about a beauty pageant for the Iraqi community in the US and decided to register her.
Idan won first place in the competition with perfect timing: after decades of Iraq not sending representatives to the Miss Universe pageant, the country decided to send a representative – and Sarah flew to the competition that changed her life.
Miss Israel 2017 Adar Gandelsman and Miss Iraq 2017
Now, she explains exactly what happened there. "When I arrived at the Miss Universe pageant in Las Vegas, everyone wanted to meet Miss Iraq because there hadn't been one since the 70s. It was a big deal. Everyone approached me and talked to me, except for Miss Israel. It was strange."
"During one of the photo shoots, I waved at her, and she waved back. Then, like a little bird, Adar (Gandelsman, Miss Israel 2017) approached me. I could feel she was afraid to come closer. I asked her why, and she explained that they were instructed not to talk to the models from Arab countries."
Q: And when you took that famous selfie with her, did you understand that the sky was about to fall?
"No. When I talked to Adar, I told her I had no problem with her. On the contrary, if anything – we need to show people that we're okay. So I suggested we take a picture. I posted it on Instagram and went to sleep."
While the world around her was in turmoil, Sarah was completely unaware of what was happening around her selfie. Exhausted from long days of competition, she slept soundly. "I woke up in the morning, and my phone was exploding: messages, phone calls, and everyone going crazy. My family had already received death threats, which forced them to leave Iraq. Even the managers of the 'Miss Iraq' organization who sent me were receiving threats. I think it was the Iraqi Minister of Culture who told them they would take away their license if I didn't delete the picture."
The photo storm intensified when news sites worldwide reported on the event, and eventually, Idan was forced to publish a clarification. "I told them that if I delete it, people will think I'm a weak person who can't stand up for what I believe in. The compromise was that I would post another post with a statement they wrote for me, where I announced that I don't support the Israeli government's policy in the Middle East and that I support the Palestinian cause. Of course, I deleted that post a day after the competition. I hate being told what to believe."
The statement did not quell the storm. "Since then, a flood of death threats, hate messages, and conspiracies began. People started creating videos where they took pictures of me when I was in the American military with my name – Sarah – which is a common name in Iraq but also a Jewish name, and claimed that I was a Mossad agent born in Tel Aviv."
Q: There was a full circle moment a few years ago when you were photographed with your former boss, Yossi Cohen.
She laughs. "Social media went crazy. They were very angry about it."
Sarah Idan with former head of Mossad Yossi Cohen
After the famous photo of Sarah and Adar at the Miss Universe pageant, Sarah's life underwent a sharp change: her family fled Iraq, her Iraqi citizenship was revoked, and she decided to officially become an activist against antisemitism.
"When they thought I was a Mossad agent, I dealt with crazy antisemitism and understood what you go through. They sent me messages with pictures of Hitler and wrote to me, 'It's a shame Hitler didn't finish you off' and that I'm a 'dirty Jew who came from monkeys and pigs.'"
Idan, a Muslim who grew up in Iraq, ironically experienced antisemitism. She could no longer stay silent and became a one-woman public relations machine, giving interviews to the media, attending events, and posting pro-Israel content for years.
Islam and I
Since the terrible morning of Black Saturday, the question "Where were you on October 7?" has become common among Israelis. But Idan also remembers exactly where she was and how she felt at those moments.
"I was at home when I received a phone call from my friend, Hillel (Silverman, niece of comedian Sarah Silverman), who called me from Israel. She was panicking and said to me, 'Sarah, oh my God, turn on the TV. I think we're under attack.' At first, I answered her indifferently, 'What's new? You're attacked every day.' But then I went on social media. Every video, every picture, caused me actual physical pain in my heart. I thought maybe something was wrong with my blood pressure. I couldn't watch anymore. I felt immense pressure in my head. The anger and sadness made me physically ill."
She channeled the emotions that welled up in her into what she does best: spreading the truth on social media. "I tried to share with the world what was happening and post content, mainly in Arabic, because Arab media was hiding what happened."
"They only showed videos of Hamas fighting IDF soldiers. They didn't show the young people massacred at Nova or the women who were raped, so I tried to show that to people. I wrote there, 'Look at the barbaric Hamas, see what they're doing.' And I was really shocked by their responses. They claimed it was a lie and denied it while it was happening."
Q: To this day they deny it – and not just in the Arab world, in the Western world too.
"I went to Cornell and Stanford universities. They had a tent there, and I wanted to understand what the hell was going on there, so I wore a hijab and went there. I pretended I was one of them and started talking to them in Arabic. It felt like their organization was a militia of ... you know, like the militias in Iraq. They have orders, and they follow orders. They're not regular students."
Q: Orders from whom?
"They're part of a larger organization, supported by entities like the Iranian regime, the Muslim Brotherhood, all of America's enemies. Who funds the universities? Qatar. That's why they allowed them to protest and set up tents on university grounds. If a university's board of directors gets its money directly from Qatar, aren't the protesters in the tents also getting their money from the same places?"
At some point during the war, Idan decided she had to visit Israel herself and see with her own eyes the horror that had occurred. This isn't the first time she's visited Israel, but the difference from her previous visits was enormous.
"The first time I came, people were carefree, especially in Tel Aviv. There was something in the atmosphere that reminded me of an island state. The second time it was just... the air was full of anxiety, sadness. The feeling was like when I was in Iraq during the war. It was really sad."
Q: Was there a specific moment that stayed with you?
Tears well up in her eyes as she begins to answer: "When I visited Kfar Aza, I saw a Quran that one of the Hamas members left behind, and then I saw a guy standing by the gate where Hamas entered, and he told me that his son was murdered right there. I looked at him and felt guilty."
"Of course, I'm not Hamas, and I hate Hamas, but I felt guilty and ashamed. These are my people, my religion. When I say my people, I mean Muslims. What they did in the name of religion... as an Arab, I'm ashamed. I hugged that guy at the gate of Kfar Aza and just cried with him."
Q: You're such a strong woman, and this is the first time I see you breaking down.
She pauses for a moment to wipe away the tears and drink some water. "It's hard for me that this is what my people did in the name of my religion. There's a lot of hate in the name of my religion."
Q: Were you surprised by Hamas's barbarity?
"I wasn't surprised at all. I've seen it already in Iraq, I know that's how they behave. I know how much they hate the Jewish people, and I know how barbaric they are. The difference is that if I once thought it was only radical Islamists who hate Jews, after October 7, I realized it's 90 percent of ordinary people."
"When I posted the video of the kidnapped woman with the blood-soaked pants (Naama Levy), one of the responses I got was from a woman who wished that Hamas would catch me too and turn me into a sex slave. I went to her profile and saw a picture of her with her husband and two little girls. And she's wishing for me to be a sex slave of Hamas."
"It's intense hatred for the Jewish people, stemming from the dehumanization that has been done to Jews in Arab countries for a long time. Muslims always refer to them as descendants of pigs and monkeys."
Sarah Idan with Michael Levy, brother of hostage Or Levy
Politics and I
In the past year, she has been working full-time as an advocate for Israel worldwide and exposing the crimes committed by Hamas on October 7. When I ask her what grade she gives to Israeli public diplomacy, she laughs and politely answers: "Listen, they're trying to do their best, and they've definitely improved."
"They started looking at people like me and other activists and saying, 'Oh, we need to work with these people.' So I'll give them 70 as credit for the effort. Let's put it this way – the performance could be much better."
Q: You tried to run for the US Congress recently, and it didn't quite work out. Is politics still your goal?
"It's definitely still a goal, but I don't think it was the right time, maybe in the next elections. We'll see. I want my voice to reach as many people as possible and to be able to represent people with similar views to mine. Secular Muslims who don't want to fight Israel and don't want to support radical Islam. People who want to improve the world, improve Iraq, and protect freedom."
Q: Among all the battles you're fighting, is there time to enjoy?
"Rarely. I deal with this every day, all day. It's very intense, and it completely drains you. It leaves you exhausted, bitter, and sad. Sometimes, when it gets too heavy for me, I take a break and try to go do something I love, like playing the piano or just being with myself without the phone and without talking about politics."
Q: The cliché about beauty queens is that in their winning speech, they wish for world peace. Do you believe it's possible?
"I'm working on it. It's definitely possible, but I don't think it will happen during our lifetime. Maybe a thousand years from now."
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