Undaunted by Attacks, Online Educator Ms. Rachel Elevates Stories of Gaza's Children

Amid accusations that her social media posts about children in Gaza spread "pro-Hamas propaganda" and even that she is paid by the designated terrorist group—a claim that was amplified by The New York Times last week—the megapopular children's entertainer and educator known as Ms. Rachel is showing no signs that she plans to stop advocating for young Palestinians.

Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, featured a visit with a three-year-old Palestinian girl named Rahaf in her latest post Wednesday on Instagram, where her 3 million followers have seen numerous posts from her in recent months about children in Gaza.

"This is my friend, Rahaf, from Gaza. Meeting her and her wonderful mama Israa changed my life," wrote Accurso in the post's caption, explaining that the Palestine Children's Relief Fund facilitated the mother and child's medical evacuation to the U.S. after Rahaf lost both her legs in an Israeli airstrike.

The video post showed Accurso and Rahaf singing and dancing in matching pink headbands, but Accurso shared in the caption that the visit included a difficult moment when she spoke with Rahaf's brothers and their father, who are still in Gaza.

One minute I was pretending to be bunnies with Rahaf and the next minute I was video chatting with her two adorable, young brothers in Gaza, as her mom, Israa, held the phone up for me. I watched Israa look at them proudly, like I look at my son. It was a drastic snap back into reality. I imagined myself holding the phone in the U.S. with my daughter, now a double amputee from an airstrike, away from my son in Gaza, unable to help him. I felt like I was going to throw up and came back into the moment. "I hope to meet you one day!" I happily said, in my classic Ms. Rachel voice but with tears in my eyes.

Israa tells me that they no longer eat while video chatting with her sons. Her sons are so hungry and have so little food. They look about 5 and 7 years old. About my son's age.

[...]

I ask Israa what she did for work. She answers that she was a teacher and taught math. I think about how Israa and I are both teachers. We both love our children with all of our hearts. We want the same thing for them. But my son will have dinner tonight, a story and snuggle with me, school in the morning… and hers won't. If the situation was the other way around, what would I hope Israa would do for me?

The post was just the latest of many pleas for an end to Palestinian children's suffering by Accurso, a former music teacher who until recently was mostly known for her YouTube videos geared toward toddlers, featuring nursery rhymes and early language lessons.

In other posts she has shared photos of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl whose voice was heard in a phone call she made to emergency workers before she was killed, alone in a car, in an airstrike in Gaza in January 2024; reflections on the suffering of Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas in October 2023; and messages demanding an end to Israel's blockade on all humanitarian aid that began in March.

"When you hear about the thousands and thousands of children killed in Gaza, do you hear a statistic or think of individual children like precious Rahaf?" wrote Accurso last week after her first visit with Rahaf. "When you hear about the kids being blocked from aid do you think about sweet kids like Rahaf becoming malnourished? Trying to make it controversial to speak for these children and staying silent shows that you are saying some children's lives are more important than others—it's based in anti-Palestinian racism. It's not a crime to want the children of Gaza to have food, water, and medical care—keeping it from them is."

Her advocacy for Palestinian children has garnered the attention of the organization StopAntisemitism, which called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether Accurso is funded by Hamas.

A number of progressive journalists condemned the Times last week for asking her whether the accusation was true, with one saying the question was "dangerous journalistic malpractice."

"Ms. Rachel has freaked out the entire media class because she has shown how easy it is to humanize Palestinians and treat them with compassion while the mainstream media has spent 19 months doing precisely the opposite," said Alex Foley of the Accountability Archive, which collects records of public figures backing Israel's assault on Gaza. "She's not a political actor and that's what makes it so powerful. She's just a person who looked out and saw the common humanity in people who are suffering and said this is intolerable."

In an interview with Mehdi Hasan at Zeteo last week, Accurso said that while policymakers in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere have "tried to make it controversial" to speak out about Israel's impact on Palestinian children's lives, "I think it should be controversial to not say anything."

Writer Alon Mizrahi called Accurso "the biggest dissident in America" after she posted her latest video with Rahaf.

"American culture instructed her to hate Palestinian kids, to see them as nonhuman, to rejoice in their destruction, and to support it," said Mizrahi. "She said no; she chose to humanize them more, and she persisted and did not succumb to immense hate and pressure. She should have our admiration forever for this. She is a hero and an icon."