Porn for Palestine

If you’ve heard of Mia Khalifa, it’s for one of two reasons.

It’s likely because she’s one of the most famous faces in pornography. This is highly ironic, as it’s an industry she hates, was only involved with for a short time, and has trashed ever since. Despite the fame it has brought her—which she continues to monetize—Khalifa has few credits to her name. She told Playboy in 2018 that she’d only done 12 nonsolo professional videos (her IAFD page puts it at closer to 30, but no matter), and she shot these over roughly three months, before signing an exclusivity deal with Bang Bros, which she resigned from a few weeks later.

She would have been completely forgotten were it not for wearing hijabs in a stepmother threesome scene (along with co-star Juliana Vega)—a choice that sent the video viral and made her famous. She was soon the No. 1 searched “star” on PornHub, but also received death threats, apparently including from ISIS members.

Until Oct. 7, this was the only reason she was well-known. But if you’ve logged onto X in the months since Hamas’ massacre, you probably know her for something else. Despite experiencing the threat of religious violence—both because of her pornographic work and as the daughter of Christians who fled Lebanon after Hezbollah seized control of the country in 2000—she has become one of the most vocal advocates of Hamas and anti-Israeli violence, with no degree of barbarism too much for comfort.

Indeed on Oct. 7, her reaction to videos of Hamas’ atrocities was to tweet, “Can someone please tell the freedom fighters in Palestine to flip their phones and film horizontal.”

Khalifa’s interest in the issue, however, has been sustained. Since Oct. 7, she has tweeted defending the Houthis (“Imagine bombing a country for seizing a ship in their own waters that THEY have jurisdiction over …….”), insisting that celebrities supporting Israel have “no soul or opinions of their own,” and “it’s the money that’s talking,” calling Israel’s war a “genocide” that has turned Gaza into a “concentration camp” run by “a genocidal sociopath playing out before our eyes, funded by our tax dollars,” and labelling Gal Gadot a “Genocide Barbie” for organizing screenings of footage from the Oct. 7 attacks. She also retweeted baseless accusations that the tunnels illegally built beneath Chabad’s headquarters in Brooklyn were used for pedophilia.

Though there has been much backlash from the part of humanity that doesn’t support the slaughter of Jews, Khalifa has also earned a lot of stans in her comments cheering on her barbs. But Khalifa’s antisemitic anti-Zionism, while it appears sincere, is also a grift; a sign of the broken economy of online adult influencers that incentivizes provocation and extreme rhetoric over everything else. Even more than porn, applauding Hamas has given Khalifa the most important currency in the internet economy: attention.

From its first edition published in 1953, Playboy always tried to combine the licentious with meaningful political discourse. In his opening editorial, Hugh Hefner imagined the Playboy reader as the sort of man who would “enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” The following year, the magazine would serialize Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and in the years to come, its “Playboy Philosophy” column aired arguments about gay and women’s rights, drug legalization, and free expression. The Playboy Interview became second only to 60 Minutes as America’s premier interview series.

And yet, despite publishing A-tier writing, the intellectual seriousness of the magazine was almost always dismissed. To “read Playboy for the articles” was a common joke. The magazine is dead, having imploded in a fit of internal dysfunction in 2020. But however much Hugh and his editors and writers tried, sex and politics wouldn’t sit comfortably together.

With the advent of the internet, pornography faced the same challenge that journalism writ large is currently navigating: the free proliferation of something that used to cost money. No longer restrained to nudie mags and VHS tapes, nudity of all stripes and tastes became one Google search away—and porn stars weren’t paid when someone Googled “boobs.”

The response of the porn industry mirrored that of the news media: ad businesses, bundled content, and paywalls. Conglomerates WGCZ s.r.o. and Aylo—formerly MindGeek—bought studios (including Bang Bros) and then released free, ad-supported versions of their videos for their various tube sites, like Xvideos, PornHub, RedTube, and YouPorn. Long before New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger bought Wordle, porn studios told viewers to whip out their credit card if they wanted access to the best stuff. The kings of premium pornography, Vixen Media Group, began charging $599 a year for access to all their sites. Through it all, porn stars have emerged as an odd species of celebrity—hugely famous and looked at, but rarely spoken about in polite conversation.

The landscape changed again with the advent of platforms like OnlyFans and JustForFans, which allowed adult film stars to harness the entrepreneurial potential of the influencer economy. Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, these platforms introduced a new, independent income stream for professional porn stars and amateur exhibitionists alike. Instead of just paying for nudity, OnlyFans subscribers pay for personal access to these performers through DMs and message boards. The biggest stars began outsourcing their messaging to staff or AI personas.

To be a successful porn star in 2024 is to combine semi-authentic self-expression with the craft of social media influencers. And having a distinct and memorable personality is crucial for helping adult film stars stand out, just as it is for any other influencer. You have to be novel—unique amid a sea of nondescript free nudity.

Thus the empire of OnlyFans star Belle Delphine is built on her quirky YouTube humor, manic aura, and cultivated teen or even preteen appearance, while Aella’s relies on her unfiltered, direct intelligence. She looks beautiful, and talks about sex very openly; but so do many people, and participating in Free Press debates about feminism, making detailed sexual preference surveys, and being a regular podcast guest—speaking intelligently on all matters around dating and romance—makes her stand out. And though Mia Khalifa’s OnlyFans is just lewd, the same principles apply. Controversy gets clicks, and she’s a busty, pro-Palestinian activist who is completely unhinged on Twitter, which is a winning recipe.

And as a user, it also makes you feel like the kind of well-rounded person Hugh Hefner hoped to appeal to. For Khalifa’s subscribers, they are not only paying for pornography and nude content, but also for a product that makes them feel politically virtuous and informed.

The only Jewish owner of a major gay porn studio, Michael Lucas—a 51-year-old producer and both a U.S. and Israeli citizen—runs Lucas Entertainment out of Manhattan. Among the hundreds of films under his beltline, Men of Israel is a particular landmark production. As Tablet Executive Editor Wayne Hoffman wrote in 2009, it was the first gay porn film featuring an all Jewish cast. Unlike Khalifa, Lucas is a veteran in the industry (he is in the GayVN Hall of Fame), has generally centrist political views, and hasn’t cheered on the slaughter of innocents. Since Oct. 7, Lucas has made a “small donation” to Israel and received a thank you video from IDF soldiers in response.

When anti-Israel reactionary commentator Jake Shields tweeted in outrage after IDF soldiers sarcastically wrote Shields’ name on an Israeli rocket, Lucas replied with a photo of another missile, on which soldiers had penned in red marker: “From Michael Lucas to Gaza.” Lucas tweeted “Hahaha I actually asked to write my name. Got a pic before and after.”

The first part of this was a joke—Lucas did not write his name on the missile—but he was just riling up an online provocateur. Prior to rebranding as an ally of Palestinian refugees, Shields was best known as a former MMA fighter who defended Kanye’s antisemitism, “asked questions” about the Holocaust, opposed women having the right to vote, and once said that “Andrew Tate and Greta Thunberg need to stop flirting and just fuck already,” before following this up with the gentlemanly “just give her a proper smashing and she will knock it off with her crazy feminest/climate [sic] nonsense.”

Lucas was toying with an asshole. But in his professional life, the tweet itself was a bomb.

Gay porn star Sean Xavier said he would never work with Lucas’ company again, or promote the work he did for them. Derek Kage, Aiden Ward, and Teddy Graham all followed suit, and mononymous porn star Sharok tried to spread the hashtag #boycottmichaellucas and called Lucas “an accessory to murder and genocide.” Porn star Sammy Sinsss said Lucas is “disgusting and a disgrace to the gay community”; ItalianXlff said, “This is utterly unacceptable. I’m shocked this has been posted. It made me sick! 😔” and Nico Kraken wrote, “No surprise that’s why nobody likes him in Puerto Vallarta, always had that racist behavior.”

Where Khalifa posts selfies behind an OnlyFans paywall, and thus financially benefits from all controversy bringing attention to it, Lucas works in the pre-influencer model of the porn economy, making films that require actors and a crew to produce. His comments have made his name better known—unintentionally, of course—but only insofar as he is becoming a notorious pariah in the porn industry for his stance on Israel. Talent who may have considered working with him may now stay away over worries that they too will be called out if they star in his films.

By contrast, so far, there has been no downside to speaking out against Lucas. These terminally online adult stars, immersed in today’s attention economy, have their OnlyFans linked in their bios. Replying to Sharok’s tweet—which has over 4,000 likes and 1.2 million “views”—is good marketing.

Khalifa’s tweets made it an easy sport to dunk on her, mentioning her history in sex work as a way to delegitimize her opinions. It’s become routine to (correctly) point out that Hamas would “throw her from a building” for her pornographic work (among other reasons), or to say variants of “You’re telling me the degenerate porn star isn’t the brightest bulb?” “she’s a porn star so her decision making is questionable,” “she isn’t exactly known for her brains. Not that kind at least,” and “she sucked d*ck for a living. what do you expect” (as though expertise in fellatio is incompatible with having informed, morally sound politics). Dave Rubin said, “She’s a bigger cunt in real life than in the videos 😉” and had previously said, in response to an anti-Zionist tweet of hers, that “you’ve had too many loads blown on your face.”

But Khalifa isn’t the loser here. All of these retweets and quote-tweets have only brought more eyeballs and wallets to her OnlyFans, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A month and a day after imploring Hamas members to hold their phones sideways to better capture the rape, murder, and incineration of Israeli Jews, she tweeted: “I love all my new followers on onlyfans who have subscribed just to say they support the cause. I see all of your messages and they mean the world to me, thank you🤍🍉”