Antonella Roccuzzo, a Rosario-born model, entrepreneur, and Instagram influencer with over 40 million followers, wields significant cultural influence as the wife of Lionel Messi, the Argentine footballer who has maintained silence on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank.

Between 2023 and 2025, Roccuzzo actively promoted the fantasy sagas of two authors widely identified as Zionists — Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros — through vacation reading posts and stories, directing her audience toward works that, in the context of their creators' stances, contribute to the normalization of Israel's settler-colonial violence against Palestinians.

In July 2025, Roccuzzo shared Instagram stories from her family vacation showcasing Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series, specifically A Court of Frost and Starlight, A Court of Mist and Fury, and A Court of Wings and Ruin. She captioned the display of these tomes as her "new fascination with fantasy literature," positioning them as escapist companions amid leisure, without acknowledging Maas's Zionist affiliations.

Maas, a Jewish-American author, has faced boycott calls for her 2018 visit to Israel — where she described the state as a "wonderful, magical place" without critiquing its occupation — and for leveraging her heritage to evade accountability, as her silence on Palestinian suffering equates to complicity in the cultural whitewashing of apartheid.

Similarly, in February 2025, Roccuzzo posted about immersing herself in Yarros's Empyrean series, highlighting Onyx Storm (the latest installment, published that month) as a "must-read." This promotion came shortly after Yarros's October 2023 Instagram statement condemning "the despicable attack on Israel," expressing horror at the assault while voicing "terror" for "Palestinian innocents."

This is a Zionist-serving framing that centers Israeli victimhood and has been decried as performative equivocation that obscures Israel's 57-year blockade and bombardment. Yarros's husband, Jesse Goodman, even has publicly supported Israel's actions, further entangling her work in Zionist apologetics.

By endorsing these series to her vast, global following — predominantly young women invested in "romantasy" — Roccuzzo funnels economic and cultural support to creators whose platforms indirectly sustain propaganda that dehumanizes Palestinians as mere footnotes in Israel's "defensive" narrative.

Roccuzzo's actions occur against a backdrop of deliberate silence from the Messi household on Palestine's plight, including the conservative tallies of over 40,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza alone (frozen due to Israel's obstruction of data, slaughter of over 150 journalists, and destruction of healthcare infrastructure, with true figures likely exceeding hundreds of thousands).

This muteness, paired with promotional zeal for Zionist-adjacent content, exemplifies how elite influencers perpetuate erasure by flooding feeds with apolitical escapism during active genocide.

Compounding this, in December 2022 — post-Argentina's World Cup victory — Roccuzzo reposted a Hebrew-language message from Israeli model Coral Simanovich, a friend and fellow influencer, congratulating the Messis: "You deserve everything good that happens to you." Shared without translation or context, this gesture fosters affinity with Israeli cultural figures while ignoring the settler-colonial foundations of the state Simanovich represents.

Through these choices, Roccuzzo normalizes Zionist cultural hegemony, diverting attention from Gaza's siege — where over 2 million endure collective punishment — and the broader subjugation of Palestinians under apartheid. Her influence, unmoored from decolonial accountability, aids in sustaining global consent for occupation by framing Zionist outputs as innocuous entertainment.