Children’s YouTube star Ms. Rachel says the backlash over her posts on the Israel-Hamas war “doesn’t faze” her anymore, and she’s not backing off her criticism of celebrities who stay quiet on the subject.
The entertainer, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, told Rolling Stone in an interview published Tuesday that her comments on Gaza have drawn sharper criticism than anything else she’s weighed in on, including her remarks on the Trump administration’s deportation policies and LGBTQ activism.
She said the reaction caught her off guard at first.
“I thought everyone hated me at one point,” Accurso said. “I remember calling friends and family members, Jewish and not Jewish, and just being like, ‘Why do people hate that I don’t want kids to be killed and starved?'”
Accurso told the magazine she isn’t worried about losing sponsors or audience over her position.
“‘You’re gonna lose this partnership. You’re gonna lose views.’ That doesn’t faze me because the kids gave me the platform. I’m going to stand with them no matter what,” Accurso said. “People on the ground in Gaza are risking their lives all the time to help kids. I can do it from Manhattan.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Accurso for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Accusations of a racial double standard
The Rolling Stone interview came days after Accurso accused celebrities who have stayed silent on Gaza of applying a racial double standard to which children’s suffering deserves attention.
“They probably would say something if these kids were White and from a different place. Please stop being racist and risk something,” Accurso said on Instagram.
She was also among several prominent progressives who criticized singer Ed Sheeran after Macklemore was removed as the opening act for his tour. Macklemore had repeatedly called for a “Free Palestine” and performed his song “Hind’s Hall” during his sets.
“Ed Sheeran had an opportunity [to] show that we won’t be bullied into punishing people for supporting Palestine. Instead, he caved to people who refuse to accept what the world knows. A genocide is happening in Gaza. We all need to speak out against it,” Accurso wrote.
She went further, writing: “If more than 20,000 White children were killed in another part of the world, everyone would be shouting about it at their concerts. Treating some children’s lives as less worthy of outrage is racist. Silence during a genocide is not neutral.”
Pushback from Jewish organizations
Pro-Israel groups and organizations have repeatedly criticized Accurso for accusing Israel of committing “genocide,” arguing her posts amount to anti-Israel propaganda.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told Fox News Digital that Accurso’s stated concern for children doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
“To attempt to dress up Jew-hatred as a righteous cause is by no means new. No one is criticizing Rachel Accurso because she doesn’t ‘want kids to be killed and starved.'”
Menken argued Accurso’s focus is disproportionate given the scale of child malnutrition worldwide.
“She claims to care about 35.5 million children suffering from acute malnutrition across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, but spends an inordinate amount of time speaking about 0.031 million children in Gaza. When 0.09% of starving children receive 90% of her attention, something is wrong.”
He also pointed to what he described as her delayed response to Israeli hostages.
“She had nothing to say about Israeli children being held hostage until seven months later, when the backlash became too loud to ignore. It is clear that her problem is not a deep concern for children, but that she is using her purported deep concern to mask something much darker,” Menken concluded.
