Why YouTube tot celebrity Ms Rachel waded into the Gaza debate
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Ms Rachel Accurso, under the name Ms Rachel, has 14 million YouTube subscribers.
PHOTO: AMY LOMBARD/NYTIMES
Marc Tracy
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NEW YORK – With her pink headband, denim overalls and permanent smile, Ms Rachel has become a mainstay in the households of pre-school-aged children who are drawn to her good cheer and sing-alongs. Parents revere her pedagogical practising of skills like waving, clapping and pronouncing consonants.
The former music teacher’s YouTube videos became such a sensation – 14 million subscribers, 1 billion views – that in January, Netflix began licensing episodes.
Ms Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, at times presents a different side of herself on other social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where the content is geared less toward toddlers and more towards their parents.
There, her millions of followers will also find impassioned videos touching on current events. These focus on the push for universal childcare and geopolitical crises that have led to suffering children – above all, the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
In March, for instance, Ms Accurso posted a video of two children watching a Ms Rachel video amid rubble. The caption read: “My friends Celine and Silia in what used to be their home in Gaza. They deserve to live in a warm, safe home again.”
On May 12, Ms Accurso posted to her Instagram account photos of a meeting she said she had last week with Rahaf, a three-year-old girl from Gaza who lost her legs in an air strike, and the child’s mother. The meeting was arranged through the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
Rahaf’s mother “and I both love our children with all of our hearts”, Ms Accurso wrote, adding: “My son will have dinner tonight, a story and snuggle with me, school in the morning and hers won’t”, referring to Rahaf’s brothers in Gaza.
The post was followed by an interview on the news site Zeteo, combining to make this Ms Accurso’s most outspoken few days to date on this subject.
“It’s so clear how we should treat children to help them thrive and grow into happy, healthy adults,” Ms Accurso said, responding to questions over e-mail.
“We need to stop failing them,” she said, adding that, in particular, no children should have their crucial brain development ages of zero to three interrupted by trauma.
Conservative backlash
But Ms Accurso’s advocacy on behalf of Gazan children has led some supporters of Israel to accuse her of treating Palestinian children with more sympathy than Israeli ones, including those abducted in Hamas’ attack of Oct 7, 2023
In April, the advocacy group StopAntisemitism labelled Ms Accurso the “Antisemite of the Week” and, The New York Post reported, sent a letter urging Attorney-General Pam Bondi to investigate whether Ms Accurso is receiving funding to further Hamas’ agenda.
Ms Accurso “posted nearly 50 times about the children of Gaza, most of which is filled with misinformation from Hamas, and only five times about Israeli children”, the group, which monitors statements about Israel on social media accounts of prominent figures, said on its website.
“In the case of the Israeli children, she only posted due to widespread public backlash, never condemning Hamas and the Palestinians.”
Ms Accurso, 42, in an e-mailed response denied having received money from Hamas. “This accusation is not only absurd, it’s patently false,” she said.
“I’ve spent my life committed to the learning and well-being of children,” she added. “I have always believed that safety and security are a basic human right for every child – so you see, caring about children in Gaza is a direct continuation of the work I’ve been doing most of my life. We don’t care about only some of our students because of where those students were born, we care about every one of them.”
She did not dispute that she has posted more frequently about Gaza children.
“The painful reality,” she said, “is that Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed by the thousands and continue to be killed, maimed and starved right now. The idea that caring about one group of children prevents us from caring about another group of children is false.”
Recently, the United Nations estimated that more than 90 per cent of Gaza’s population faces food insecurity
StopAntisemitism tracks the statements of public figures for antisemitism under a polarising definition that can include undermining Israel’s right to exist or comparing Israeli policy to Nazi policy.
A family foundation that on its website says it funds numerous centre-right pro-Israel groups, including the Jewish Republican Alliance and Christians United for Israel, says it funds StopAntisemitism.
The group and the foundation did not reply to requests for comment.
‘She cares’
Ms Accurso’s activism has divided Jewish parents distraught by the relative dearth of posts about Israeli children, with whom many Jews worldwide feel a powerful connection.
“Ms Rachel seems to be someone who is really, really good-hearted, but in the context of everything that’s going on – she says, ‘I care about all children’, but really she’s talking about the children of Gaza,” Ms Stacy Hackner, a teacher at a London cheder, a school of Jewish instruction, said in an interview. “That has left a lot of Jewish parents feeling quite isolated.”
The UN estimates that 90 per cent of Gaza’s population faces food insecurity.
PHOTO: AFP
Ms Accurso also has many defenders.
“Do you see a through-line there?” Crooked Media podcast host Tommy Vietor, referring to Ms Accurso’s mentioning children in several war zones, said in an online post.
“She cares deeply about the well-being of children,” he said.
Interviewing Ms Accurso on the news site Zeteo on May 12, Mr Mehdi Hasan said of her posts, “It’s crazy that it’s become controversial,” adding: “When you speak out about kids in Gaza, Palestinian children, some people – I should say, a minority – go crazy. They think it’s somehow controversial, it’s divisive.”
The stakes surrounding what Ms Accurso says can seem higher than for a typical celebrity because families who play her videos are inviting her into their most intimate space: their own toddlers’ attention.
Ms Accurso is herself a parent of two young children. Her videos originated shortly after her son encountered a speech delay after turning one.
Her unique position “opens her up to a felt sense of connection or even parasociality to other parents”, said Professor Brooke Erin Duffy, of Cornell University, who studies the intersection of labour and new technologies.
“If you look at the images,” Prof Duffy added, referring to Ms Accurso’s posts of children in Gaza, “it is showcasing the young children who are experiencing these vulnerabilities. It’s not unabashedly political. But within such a polarised climate, everyone is up for scrutiny and critique – especially if you have that level of audience engagement.”
A review of Ms Accurso’s Instagram posts over the past 18 months shows that her activism has focused primarily on Gaza children.
Her work with World Food Programme USA – to which she and her husband and business partner, Mr Aron Accurso, recently pledged US$1 million (S$1.3 million), she said – has also seen her mention malnourished and suffering children in Mali, Sudan and Haiti.
Ms Accurso also made several posts about Ariel and Kfir Bibas, Jewish children whom Hamas took hostage with their mother, Shiri.
A post in February after the Bibases’ deaths
