At first sight, it appears to be yet another lifestyle scene, the sort that pops up every day as we scroll through Instagram or TikTok. A huge luxury yacht owned by a multi-millionaire is anchored at an exotic island. On the deck are dozens of young girls clad in bikinis, dancing, drinking expensive alcoholic beverages, and above all posting images on social media that make you eat your heart out with envy. The scenery surrounding them may well vary. On occasions, it might be a stunningly sumptuous, luxury villa, sometimes a veritable palace or an ultra-exclusive entertainment complex. The multi-millionaire might be a famous Hollywood actor, a billionaire sheik from a Gulf state, an aging high-tech tycoon or a Russian oligarch.

The problem is that underneath the deceptive glossy facade of hedonism lies a considerably worrying truth, which is far from the happy-go-lucky and fun image. Welcome to the world of image trips, a euphemism used to gloss over an ugly industry that generates millions of dollars, and when taken to its extreme, may border on both mental and physical abuse, sexual assault and human trafficking.

"On one of those trips, I flew out to spend time with a sheik from the UAE in return for 10,000 euros. We went out to dinner with a number of other models from Argentina, and the sheik drank and drank, eventually becoming so inebriated that he fell over. I couldn't help laughing at the sight of this. Then, in a fit of rage, he hit me on the head with the bottle of wine he was holding. There was blood everywhere and I simply began to scream. Two of his Filipino aides helped me to the bathroom to staunch the flow of blood, and when I asked to leave they replied that this would not be possible, saying to me: 'your passport is with us, so you cannot go anywhere. Just calm down.'

The image trips industry, which in recent years has gained serious momentum, for an appropriate price, links up immensely wealthy men with young girls from all over the world, some of whom are still only teenagers. These young girls are flown either first class or on private jets to functions and parties around the world, where they are required to be seen in the proximity of the clients who have paid good money for their presence, and on occasions also to provide additional 'personal services'.

Elle, a 29-year-old model from the Netherlands, who has been involved in numerous image trips for the last decade, is one of those young girls who has been scarred by them. She is now going out to expose the dark world that lies beneath the veneer of the sparkling exterior.

"On one of those trips, I flew out to spend time with a sheik from the UAE in return for 10,000 euros. We went out to dinner with a number of other models from Argentina, and the sheik drank and drank, eventually becoming so inebriated that he fell over. I couldn't help laughing at the sight of this. Then, in a fit of rage, he hit me on the head with the bottle of wine he was holding. There was blood everywhere, and I simply began to scream. Two of his Filipino aides helped me to the bathroom to staunch the flow of blood, and when I asked to leave they replied that this would not be possible, saying to me: 'Your passport is with us, so you cannot go anywhere. Just calm down.'

"Afterwards, they took me to a huge villa where a doctor took care of me, and then the sheik arrived, he apologized to me and asked me to remain there one more night. We went to sit in the lounge and he continued drinking. At some stage, he asked one of the Argentinian models to sleep with his son. She refused, pointed at him and hold him to stop drinking so much alcohol."

Here, Elle describes a nightmare scene, which could easily have been taken from a Scorsese mafia movie: "The sheik looked at his aide and said, 'bring a knife.' Then, two guys held the Argentinian girl down by force, pressed her finger down onto a silver plate, and cut it off. All of this simply because she had dared to point at him.

"At that very moment, I really thought that I was going to die. I began to cry. The sheik became angry and threatened to hit me unless I stopped. When I was unable to stop, he stood in front of me and hit me with his belt, until I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I found myself locked up in a small closet. They left me there for hours."

"Eventually the sheik's female assistant arrived, she gave me my passport and told me that I must leave, 'otherwise I would not live.' I tried to locate that Argentinian model afterwards on social media, but I was unable to find out what had become of her. It was as though she had disappeared off the face of the earth."

An offer from Jeffrey Epstein

The story that Elle recounts does appear to be somewhat excessive, but it is far from strange to an entire industry that is based on exploitation, abuse and the constant exposure to physical danger by wealthy individuals who for the most part act under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Men who are convinced that their money can fulfill their every whim and desire, at the expense of women who lack any real means to stand up to this.

She grew up in a sleepy town in the Netherlands, she always stood out because of her rare beauty, which afforded her much attention – both positive and negative. "You need a degree of patience with me, I have never told this to a living soul," she says during our first conversation as she looks over her shoulder, ensuring that nobody is listening.

"I had a complex childhood. I was always an extraordinary girl. The girls at school were always harassing me. They would stick chewing gum in my hair, kick me, and write all sorts of lies about me. And there was a really elderly piano teacher there who sexually assaulted me. I remember that I would look on the internet for all sorts of ways of making myself ugly and unattractive. I tried putting on weight, eating raw garlic and onion. I created a habit of self-destruction, as I was unable to contend with all the torment and harassment."

"We arrived at a huge estate, and I was amazed, as I saw there some of the most beautiful works of art that I had ever seen. Dozens of other girls came to the estate from Sweden, Norway and Russia, who were really friendly. They all came from vastly different backgrounds, some of them were athletes, one was a professional tennis player and another was a cheerleader. Then, the owner's female assistant came and took us to a sort of hall where we were required to dance in front of the client. They played the worst music I had ever heard. After this finished, the assistant took us to our rooms and told us that 'they would tell us if we had been accepted.'

At some stage, she was noticed by a talent spotter from a modeling agency, after he watched her playing hockey as a young girl. She left her studies behind and began to model in campaigns all around the world. Among others, her path crossed with that of the now deceased and infamous US businessman, Jeffrey Epstein, who, according to her, proposed that she should come and live in Florida and work as his personal assistant. "As luck would have it, my mother noticed that something was not quite right with him, so I turned down his offer."

It didn't take long for her to make the shift from the regular path of modeling to the slippery slope that changed her life. "I was working on a sports clothes campaign in Cape Town, South Africa. One of the girls who was working with me, a Spanish model who was slightly wacky, would always walk around with lots of cash on her and came to work with Chanel bags. On one occasion, when I asked her where all the money was from, she told me about the possibility of going on something called an image trip, and that all I had to do was to go out for dinner. So, I thought to myself, 'Okay, that might be quite cool and interesting.'"

The Spanish girl friend explained to Elle that all she had to do was to send a clip of herself to one of the agencies dealing with the image trips. Elle filmed herself while engaged in yoga, but the Spanish girl then explained what she really need to do: "She laughed at me, explaining that this was not what the agency was looking for, and that I need 'to be sexy' and show my backside.

"I didn't really understand. What type of trip was this? After all, it was merely due to involve having dinner. But in the end, I put on a bikini and high heels and took a video of myself. I was only 19 years old. When we finished, she sent my pictures to the agent for approval, and within an hour they were already asking if I was able to fly out that very night."

At that stage, did you already understand that this would involve more than simply "having dinner"?

"No, I was really naive and I relied on my friend. We worked together and I believed what she said."

On the first image trip, she was flown out on business class. "This was my first ever flight in business class, and after landing, I was collected in a luxury car in which an American model was waiting, who had also been invited to dinner.

"We arrived at a huge estate, and I was amazed, as I saw there some of the most beautiful works of art that I had ever seen. Dozens of other girls came to the estate from Sweden, Norway and Russia, who were really friendly. They all came from vastly different backgrounds, some of them were athletes, one was a professional tennis player and another was a cheerleader. Then, the owner's female assistant came and took us to a sort of hall where we were required to dance in front of the client. They played the worst music I had ever heard. After this finished, the assistant took us to our rooms and told us that 'they would tell us if we had been accepted.'

"Sometime later they told me that the client liked me, and the female assistant asked if I could remain with him for a ten-day trip. I agreed. They then informed me and the other that we would have to undergo a checkup by a physician to discover if we suffered from any sexually transmitted diseases. I was alarmed. Why should I be checked if all that was involved was dancing?".

"I received death threats"

For ten days, Elle and the other young girls spent time "hanging out" with the client and his friends. Luckily enough, the trip went by with no untoward events, and without having to engage in any forced or problematic acts. "There was one girl who spoke to us out loud about this client's habits in bed, and I believe that there were listening devices in our rooms, as on the following day she was sent away."

At the end of the trip, Elle was given an envelope with a large amount of cash, and she claims she had never seen anything like it in her life. "I was over the moon. When I got back to Cape Town, I spread out the bank notes on the bed, I lay down on top of them and wallowed in them, just like in the movies. It was extremely funny."

At this early stage, she still felt that she had been presented with an easy and viable option to supplement her income. In addition to her regular work as a model she began to fly off to various venues to take part in image trips. Some were quite bizarre, such as a trip with the prime minister of a European state, who invited her to accompany him on a day trip to an isolated sauna in the snow-covered mountains. Some were just quite amusing, for example, a party thrown by a well-known giant car manufacturer which was held in the pyramids in Egypt, when Elle and the other models were asked to walk around dressed as Cleopatra.

But it wasn't long before Elle and her friends became aware that these trips might not be entirely free of risks.  Evidence of that fact stands out in the story of T., a model whose photos had appeared on the cover page of the most illustrious global fashion magazines, including Vogue. T. opted to speak anonymously due to concern of potential damage she might incur.

"Just so that you understand the situation, until a few weeks ago I had to hire a bodyguard to accompany me, as I have received death threats over the last year and a half," she recounts and refuses to expose the identity of those threatening her due to the image trips she participated in.

"Many of the agencies that organize image trips are run by people who use these companies to engage in illegal activity, so that they are surrounded by the mafia and criminal organizations. Apart from that, on those trips, you spend time with some of the world's most famous and successful people, and it can be most dangerous. Just like human trafficking, but on a more sophisticated and illustrious level. The agents move you from client to client like a pawn on a chessboard."

Then, why go on these trips in the first place?

"It is difficult to earn lots of money in regular modeling campaigns, even if you are a very good model. Sometimes, you don't get paid for six months, and even when they do pay you, the wages are not very considerable. In contrast, on the image trips, you receive much more relative to regular modeling work. In a trip of only a few hours I would earn an amount equivalent to what I would have earned in a month doing regular modeling work. I really needed that money, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic."

Dancing in front of men

Michael Gross, a highly-acclaimed American journalist and writer, who has researched the world of modeling, sheds further light on this problematic industry. "In what we generally refer to as 'modeling business' there are white, black and gray areas," he says during a conversation with Israel Hayom. "In the white area, the upper part of this world, the models are regarded as a valuable asset and thus protected accordingly. In the lower or 'black' part, they are considered as nothing more than toilet paper – to be used and discarded."

Gross, who in 1995 published the best-selling book Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, explains that in the middle of the pyramid of classes, in the gray zone, there are many young female models, such as T. and Elle. According to him, this area is a veritable "wild west" with no rules and no control over it.

"In the gray area, there are beautiful models who are prepared to leverage their looks, and that includes being exploited for money or promoting their career. This might involve the occasional flirt with a photographer, providing sexual services to an agent or manager, or selling their body as "candy to the eyes" and as sexual toys for the rich who are prepared to pay for the pleasure of gaining proximity to such beauty."

"Many of the agencies that organize image trips are run by people who use these companies to engage in illegal activity, so that they are surrounded by the mafia and criminal organizations. Apart from that, on those trips, you spend time with some of the world's most famous and successful people, and it can be most dangerous. Just like human trafficking, but on a more sophisticated and illustrious level. The agents move you from client to client like a pawn on a chessboard."

The "supply" of young girls for the image trips, which are sometimes also referred to as "atmosphere trips", is provided by private, greedy agents, who act as the go-betweens, mediating between the girls and famous people, multi-millionaires and company directors. Each agent controls an expansive network of candidates with whom he works, from models such as Elle and T. to social media influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers.

The "candidates" undergo an audition, usually by sending a personal video clip, but also sometimes via a face-to-face meeting – when this involves a particularly exclusive event. After they have passed the audition, the models will then usually be called on at short notice to go on trips, and in return they receive amounts ranging from 1,000 dollars to several tens of thousands of dollars per day. On most occasions, these trips will end up with a dinner or an innocuous party with music and dancing, but on occasions they might also involve an offer to engage in sexual intercourse with the host of the event or one of the participants in return for additional payment. Such trips are referred to as "extra" image trips.

Naturally, there are candidates who will prefer these extra trips from the outset, due to the large amounts of money that go with them. "On the regular trips, the money was not enough for me, so I began to ask for the 'extra' trips alone, and I gradually delved deeper and deeper into that world," admits T.

T. tells us of agents who sent her "to sleep with well-known billionaires," and exposes the heavy price that she has paid for this to this very day. "My life was ruined because of those trips. I have done so many things that I regret and which have caused me to suffer genuine trauma. I don't want any woman to go through what I have endured."

Compared with T., for a long time Elle refused to participate in the "extra" trips, but after a few regular image trips, she did finally agreed to cross the line. It occurred on the yacht of one of the most famous people in the world, an individual whose name would be instantly recognized by any reader.

"They told us that there was to be a huge two-week trip with partners of that particular client," Elle describes. "We were flown out to a beach opposite which two yachts were anchored, one for the models and one for the businessmen. Most of them were Chinese men in their sixties who arrived in private helicopters. Each evening, we had to move from our yacht to the large yacht, where we had to dance and 'carouse' in front of them. There were a number of famous DJs who played on the deck, and it was pretty cool. The Chinese sat on the couches around us and watched us dancing.

"On the last day, the agent approached me and said that one of the businessmen had taken a shine to me. He asked if I wanted to do 'extra'. Initially I didn't want to, but the offer involved an extremely sizable sum of money, so eventually I agreed and went off to his room."

Elle tells of another incident, in which a Mexican businessman invited her to come to Mexico in return for 30 thousand dollars. "I thought what can be so bad. I met him in a hotel penthouse. He brought be a white gown, demanded that I put it on and then left the room. I stood there in this strange white costume and I thought to myself, 'What the hell is going on here? I look like the Virgin Mary.' And then he called me to enter the other room. When I entered the room, to my amazement I saw blood daubed on the floor and some or other pagan symbol, something drawn with a star. That was a really weird experience. I felt as though I was in the middle of a sacrificial ritual. I refused to draw any nearer to him, and simply looked at him and wondered how my life had gone to pieces."

However bizarre these stories might appear to be, they are the daily reality for many models in the image trips industry. These girls find themselves having to contend with such dubious behavior that is backed up by big money. The global law enforcement authorities, on the whole, do not tend to play any active role in trying to oversee or look into this phenomenon. At best, they are simply unaware of these events, and at worst – they prefer to turn a blind eye to them. "On one occasion I did actually file a complaint with Europol (the establishment responsible for law enforcement across the EU member states, Y.E), after a wealthy client hit me," explains Elle. "When the client became aware of this, he threatened me and sent me a message stating 'I know where your mother lives.'" Elle claims that no action was taken in relation to the complaint that she filed.

Israeli fashion photographer, Adi Barkan, who has worked in the world of modeling for years, has been exposed on a number of occasions to various types of wrongdoing that occur there. "I was a fashion photographer in Paris, and there was an agency owner who came every Thursday to select girls whom he would then fly to Nice, for celebrations with his millionaire friends," he recounts during a conversation with Israel Hayom, confirming that the phenomenon of image trips does exist. "It does happen, for sure. Those billionaires keep the modeling agencies afloat. There are vast amounts of money there, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of euros. Young women and girls come to the agencies in Paris from all over the world, and they lose their heads.

"You don't have to be a real genius to get them to do it. You only need to be a small-scale manipulator who says, 'I can hook you up with clients, and one of them can get you made for life.' And then you see a 15-year-old girl attending parties with men aged 60 and 70 – and that is absolutely shocking."

Barkan, who later on established the NPO called Simply You, which fights against eating disorders in the fashion world, describes a world in which everybody is aware of this phenomenon. "To put it mildly, there is no bigger brothel than the fashion world. It is a glamorous and 'sparkling' world in which everybody wants to get ahead, and they lose their head without anybody seeing or hearing. Some of the stories circulating there will make your hair stand on end."

Is there nobody to look after those girls who can take care of them?

"Nobody. They are completely alone. Their mothers talk to them maybe once a week by phone, 'Is everything alright?', 'Yes, everything is fine,' and for the most part that is it."

Letting the wolf out of the cage

The temptation of large sums of money, alongside the dream of getting to know highly influential men, draw in many young girls like a magnet, causing them to face situations that they eventually come out of both physically and mentally scarred.

"On one of my first image trips, when I was still extremely naive, one female agent proposed that I should fly to Madrid to meet an important businessman," Elle recounts and stops to take a deep breath. "She sent me his photo and he looked to be a very young and handsome man, but when I arrived I understood that this was a photo from 20 years ago.

"I didn't want to stay with him. I tried to go, but he raped me violently. When everything was over and I left, I phoned the agent up in tears. I shouted at her, 'Listen, your client has just raped me.' In response she said to me: 'I am sorry, but this is something that can happen. Just make sure that you receive the money from him.'"

Elle: "The businessman called me, and when I entered the room, I saw a sort of pagan symbol on the floor, something with a star. That was a really weird experience. I felt as though I was in the middle of a sacrificial ritual. I refused to draw any nearer to him, and simply looked and wondered how my life had gone to pieces."

Despite the trauma, Elle explains that even after the rape she continued to go on additional trips. "I just don't know why I decided to remain in the game. Perhaps I felt that in any event I had been raped, so what is the worst thing that could happen to me now."

Looking back, how do you explain the fact that you continued taking part in the trips, despite the harrowing ordeal you endured in Madrid?

"It is interesting how the human brain can cause so much self-destruction, over and over again. I think that this was a combination of extremely bad friends, a poisonous environment and the use of a considerable volume of bad drugs."

Bewildered and disoriented from drugs, as she attempted to recover from the rape she had undergone, Elle went from bad to worse. Between trips, with her professional life in meltdown, she entered into a relationship with a partner who then financially abused her.

"He asked me to invest all my money, 100 thousand euros, in a large crypto deal. That was all my savings. He promised that I would make a huge profit from it and I wanted to buy a house for my mother, to make her happy. I handed over all my money to him – and he simply stole it. Everything vanished. And then he hit me, and it transpired that he had also cheated the landlord with regard to the rent for the apartment in which we were living. I just wanted to curl up in the corner and die. I saw a box of sleeping pills and swallowed them all." Elle stops for a moment and shows photos in which she appears injured and bruised, blood on her face and sad, listless eyes. According to Elle, after her failed suicide attempt she left her abusive partner and returned to her childhood home in the Netherlands, where she tried to put the pieces of her life back together.

It is difficult to avoid noticing the incurable optimism in you today, despite all that you have gone through.

"It is important for me to point out that not all the people taking part in the trips were bad, and that I also took part in some fun and entertaining trips. There was, for example, one ball in the luxurious palace of a king, to which I was invited along with other models. On the third night of the ball, the king's son – a rather comely young prince – took us to see the royal zoo. After the tour finished, I returned to the zoo, drunk, with another girl, and there we saw a white wolf wandering around in the cage, extremely sad. We decided to release it and simply opened the gate to the cage. This immediately set off an alarm and dozens of servants arrived from the palace. I have no idea what happened to the wolf, but we both got into trouble. They sent my friend home but the prince was very fond of me – so he decided that I should remain."

Everybody turns a blind eye

Elle once again adopts a more serious tone as she talks about the less amusing implications of these trips, and the potential damage they can cause to the young girls. Suddenly, she looks at her mobile phone and says: "Can you believe it, right now while I am talking to you I have just received a message from an agent from whom I haven't heard in more than two years. He asks if I am available in the near future."

Available for what?

"I don't know, apparently for a trip with someone. I will text him that I am no longer available – not now nor ever."

Elle is currently dreaming of opening up a private school for yoga, after she has finished her yoga instructor's course in India. "When I did the course there I was in shock. The people were so kind, courteous and normal. I wondered to myself, wow, so there are people who simply do not want to rape me or steal my money."

Why is it so important for you to tell your personal story here?

"Because such things happen on a daily basis. Young girls are sent to various locations around the world – and everybody is turning a blind eye to this. As though nobody knows about it but it is happening all around us all the time. I think that many girls are afraid to speak out, so this is a topic that is less known to the broader general public. They are very scared and ashamed. I want to break that barrier, and I hope that the fact that I have chosen to speak out might potentially save lives."

The post Image trip: The dark side of the glamor industry appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

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.

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."

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."

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."

The post Former Miss Iraq isn't afraid to salute Israel, 'I want to be on the good side' appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.