Short answer: As of July 2026, Shakira has no record of political support for Israel, and no Jewish connection (she was raised Catholic and is of Lebanese-Colombian descent). Her one clearly warm engagement was a 2011 goodwill visit for Shimon Peres's Presidential Conference, where she promoted education and voiced "great affection" for Israel and its people, expressly including both Israelis and Palestinians. Since then the record tilted the other way: a planned 2018 Tel Aviv concert fell apart amid a BDS pressure campaign, and she has neither performed in Israel nor made any public pro-Israel statement in the Gaza-war years. The record is genuinely mixed and mostly quiet, not one of support.
What Shakira has actually said and done
- June 21, 2011: Shakira, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, made her first visit to Israel to promote her global education campaign. As Ynetnews reported, she visited a joint Israeli-Arab school in Jerusalem and helped open President Shimon Peres's third annual Presidential Conference with a plea to invest in children's education.
- June 22, 2011: At the conference in Jerusalem, she framed education as the path to peace ("the road to peace has to be traveled hand in hand with education") and visited a bilingual school teaching Israeli and Arab children together, per The Jewish Chronicle. She had also visited the Western Wall.
- June 22, 2011: In an Associated Press interview during the visit, quoted by Arutz Sheva (Israel National News), Shakira said she is "very proud of my Lebanese heritage ... but it has nothing to do with the fact that I respect and have great affection for this country and the people of this country." She added that her affection extended to "both Israelis and Palestinians," saying that was why she had come. It is her warmest recorded remark toward Israel, and it pointedly extended equal respect to Palestinians.
- May 7, 2018: Israeli media reported she would play her first-ever Israel concert on July 9, 2018 at Tel Aviv's Yarkon Park. The Times of Israel noted she was expected to face BDS pressure to cancel.
- May 24, 2018: Palestinian cultural institutions and municipalities issued an open letter urging her not to perform, calling the show a "morally reprehensible whitewash" after the Gaza border killings. As Middle East Monitor documented, hundreds of organizations and thousands of activists from Gaza and Lebanon to Colombia and the United States joined the appeal.
- May 28, 2018: Amid the pressure, Live Nation stated that "the media has incorrectly reported that Shakira will be performing in Tel Aviv this summer," adding that "while no dates this summer will work," it hoped to bring a show to Israel in the future. As The Times of Israel reported (and Middle East Monitor corroborated), the show never appeared on her official tour site, leaving it ambiguous whether it was canceled or never formally booked.
- May 30, 2018: The boycott movement celebrated the outcome as a cancellation won by its campaign, grouping Shakira with artists such as Lorde, Natalie Portman, and Gilberto Gil, according to Middle East Monitor and Electronic Intifada. Shakira herself issued no statement endorsing either side.
Not Jewish, and centered on children rather than the conflict
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born in Barranquilla, Colombia, in 1977. She is not Jewish and has no reported Jewish heritage. She was raised Catholic and attended a Catholic school in her hometown. Her paternal family is of Lebanese descent (the Mebarak line traces to Lebanon), which she has cited as a source of personal pride and which frames how her Israel appearances tend to be read. As a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and founder of the Pies Descalzos education foundation, her Israel appearances have centered on that education-and-children platform, not on the political conflict.
The "does Shakira support Israel" question comes almost entirely from that 2011 Peres-conference visit, which pro-Israel outlets highlighted and BDS activists later criticized. The chapter usually left out of casual summaries is 2018, when the reported Tel Aviv concert dissolved during a high-profile Palestinian and BDS pressure campaign. And since the October 2023 war began, no statement by Shakira taking Israel's side, or condemning it, has surfaced in reputable coverage through July 2026.
The bottom line
Shakira is not a supporter of Israel in any political sense, and she is not Jewish. What exists is one warm 2011 goodwill visit built around education, in which she carefully balanced respect for Israelis and Palestinians, followed by a 2018 episode in which a planned Tel Aviv concert collapsed under BDS pressure (canceled or never booked, depending on the source), and then years of public silence on the conflict. Anyone citing her as a friend of Israel is leaning on a single 2011 visit while ignoring 2018. Anyone citing her as anti-Israel is over-reading a concert that may never have been confirmed. The accurate answer is that her stance is neutral, education-focused, and unstated on the core dispute.
Support Israel directly
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Last updated July 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
