LA Israeli Restores Gal Gadot's Defaced Hollywood Star

Yesterday (Wednesday), images circulated on social media showing Gal Gadot's Hollywood Walk of Fame Star defaced.

Yaniv Cohen, an Israeli living in Los Angeles, couldn’t ignore the sight. After seeing the images on social media, he decided to act quickly. Together with a friend, Cohen arrived at the Walk of Fame and cleaned the graffiti and stickers off the star. In posts he shared on social media, he wrote: “No one will ‘tarnish’ our name,” alongside a photo of him and his friend cleaning Gal Gadot’s star.

Cohen shared that he saw the hate-filled posts against Israelis and felt angry. He said: “I live nearby, so I decided to come and clean it with a friend. I wasn’t afraid. After we cleaned it, someone came and stomped heavily on the star, but we did what we needed to do.”

The images were spread on X by Palestinian news accounts, showing Gadot’s star covered in hateful graffiti. The star, awarded to Gadot about three months ago in a celebratory ceremony, became a target of vandalism with antisemitic slurs. Among other things, the words “baby killer” were written on it, and her surname was altered to “Greenstein” (her original family name). Later, a sticker was placed on the star with the text “Israeli snipers target children.”

The vandalism occurred as part of a wave of protests against Gadot, which also included demonstrations outside filming locations for her new movie, The Runner, in London.