Short answer: As of August 2026, Zainab Salbi's public record on Israel is mixed and does not fall neatly into a pro- or anti-Israel camp. She has criticized specific Israeli figures and actions, including a 2016 tweet about an Israeli military rabbi's comments on wartime conduct, and in 2024 she produced a podcast series centering Palestinian women's stories during the Gaza war. At the same time, in 2025 she served as a juror and presenter for an award that honored an Israeli peace activist working jointly with a Palestinian counterpart. She has no documented visits to Israel, no boycott pledges, and no Jewish-identity connection; she is a Muslim Iraqi American humanitarian.
What Zainab Salbi has actually said and done
July 12, 2016: Salbi posted on Twitter (now X): "Col. Eyal Moshe Karim, soon to be chief military Rabbi of Israeli army, states it's ok for soldiers to rape in times of war," referencing a resurfaced 2002 remark by the IDF chief rabbi nominee. The controversy was widely covered and contested in Israel's own press. See her original post on X and the Times of Israel's reporting on the appointment and the backlash.
September 2023: Salbi received the Time100 Impact Award for her humanitarian work founding Women for Women International, an honor unrelated to any Israel or Palestine stance, as noted on her Wikipedia profile.
April 2024: Amid the Gaza war, Salbi released video teasers for "Palestinian Women's Voices with Zainab Salbi," a series on her Redefined podcast and YouTube channel spotlighting Palestinian women's personal stories. Watch the teaser on her YouTube channel.
May 6, 2025: Salbi served as a juror and on-stage presenter and moderator at the Synergos David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Awards gala in New York. The award went jointly to Yael Admi, the Israeli co-founder of Women Wage Peace, and Reem Al-Hajajreh, the Palestinian co-founder of Women of the Sun, for their cross-border peace organizing. Details are on Synergos's award page and the event listing.
Context: who is Zainab Salbi, and where does she actually stand
Zainab Salbi, born in 1969 in Baghdad, is an Iraqi American humanitarian, author, and podcast host, Muslim by upbringing, best known for founding Women for Women International in 1993 and more recently co-founding the climate group Daughters for Earth. She has no documented Jewish-identity connection and no on-record visit to Israel.
Her public engagement with the Israel and Palestine issue is limited to a handful of items, none of which amounts to an organized boycott position or a formal statement of support for or against Israel. The 2016 tweet targeted a specific religious-military figure and his own contested remarks, a controversy that Israel's own press covered extensively, so it reads more as commentary on that figure than a broad stance against the country. The 2024 "Palestinian Women's Voices" series, produced during the Gaza war, is advocacy journalism centering Palestinian stories rather than a formal political declaration, and it did not have a parallel Israeli-voices series on her channel. Weighed against that, her May 2025 role at the Synergos award, which specifically elevated an Israeli peace activist working alongside a Palestinian counterpart, shows she also lends her platform to joint Israeli-Palestinian efforts rather than to one side alone. No evidence surfaced of donations to Israeli or Palestinian causes, formal BDS participation or refusal, or public remarks about October 7, the hostages, or the ceasefire.
The bottom line
Zainab Salbi is not a documented Israel supporter and not a documented anti-Israel activist. Her record shows scattered, issue-specific criticism of an Israeli figure and a Palestinian-focused media project, balanced by a 2025 role elevating a joint Israeli-Palestinian peace partnership. There is no Jewish-identity connection, no known visit to Israel, and no boycott record in either direction.
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Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
