Malala Yousafzai vows support for Gaza after backlash

While Clinton has backed a military campaign to remove Hamas and rejected demands for a ceasefire, she has also explicitly called for protections for Palestinian civilians.

Yousafzai has publically condemned the civilian casualties and called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The New York Times reported the 26-year-old wore a red-and-black pin to the “Suffs” premiere last Thursday, signifying her support for a ceasefire.

But author and academic Nida Kirmani said on X that Yousafzai’s decision to partner with Clinton was “maddening and heartbreaking at the same time”, calling it an “utter disappointment”.

The war began with an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7 that resulted in the deaths of around 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures. Hamas militants also abducted 250 people and Israel estimates 129 of them remain in Gaza, including 34 who the military says are dead.

Clinton served as America’s top diplomat during former president Barack Obama’s administration, which oversaw a campaign of drone strikes targeting Taliban militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan’s borderlands.

Yousafzai earned her Nobel Peace Prize after being shot in the head by the Pakistani Taliban as she pushed for girls’ education as a teenager in 2012.

However, the drone war killed and maimed scores of civilians in Yousafzai’s home region, spurring more online criticism of the youngest Nobel Laureate, who earned the prize at 17.

Yousafzai is often viewed with suspicion in Pakistan, where critics accuse her of pushing a Western feminist and liberal political agenda on the conservative country.