When Ms. Rachel "Likes" Antisemitism

Last week, children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel “accidentally liked” a comment that read, “Free America from Jews.” Ms. Rachel is a wildly popular children’s entertainer, known for brightly colored videos, singing nursery rhymes, and cheerful, “Dora the Explorer”-style call-and-response. In response to the backlash, Ms. Rachel posted a video casting herself as the injured party. Speaking in a wavering voice but without any visible tears, she lamented that she was “just human,” someone who “makes mistakes,” and simply isn’t “good at touching things online.”

Filming yourself while crying is a social media faux pas. Filming yourself while trying and failing to cry can only be described as pathetic.

Notably absent from her selfie-apology, however, was any serious acknowledgement of the harm caused, much less any reflection on why a call to expel Jews felt comfortable enough to appear and be endorsed on her page. She offered no recognition that antisemitism, not personal inconvenience, was at issue. Instead, Ms. Rachel cast not the seven in ten American Jews who report experiencing antisemitism last year, but herself, as the victim. Nevermind that Jew haters were emboldened by her actions; the true crime is that she almost shed an alligator tear before doubling down.

Notably absent was any serious acknowledgement of the harm caused, much less any reflection on why a call to expel Jews felt comfortable enough to appear and be endorsed on her page.

Her broader social media presence reflects this preoccupation with her own sensitivity. Posts addressed to her followers dwell on her own emotional burdens rather than accountability. One self-edifying post reads, “To those who have extreme empathy, do you also have anxiety?” In the comments, Ms. Rachel continued: “I wonder if it’s because we imagine things vividly and can put ourselves in someone else’s shoes & feel so much for them but we can also imagine everything that could go wrong at any time vividly.”

Yet again, Ms. Rachel is the victim here. Sure, photos of Syrian refugee families may be tragic for the children pictured, but what we should really be concerned with is how they make Ms. Rachel “feel so much.”

The majority of her other Instagram posts, including more than three-quarters of those posted in November, when a ceasefire had already taken place, focused squarely on Gaza. Concurrently in November, the Iranian Fundamentalist Regime hanged an average of 11 people per day, and an estimated one million Uyghur Muslims remained detained in concentration camps by Chinese authorities. On these issues? Silence.

In another post addressing the controversy, she wrote, “Silence in the face of injustice might also cause me to be more loved and for more people to watch the show, but I’m not going to do that either. I’m always going to speak out for kids whose human rights are being violated.”

The sleight of hand was hardly subtle. By “kids whose human rights are being violated,” Ms. Rachel did not mean the Bibas children kidnapped from their homes by terrorists. When Ms. Rachel has historically referenced “human rights violations” she has overwhelmingly meant those she perceives to be carried out by Israel.

After facing backlash for liking a comment that called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews, Jews themselves somehow disappeared as victims. The real victim, we were told, was Gaza, and the real offense was her failure to speak loudly enough. Rather than reckon with the antisemitism festering on her own platform, Ms. Rachel pivoted to attacking Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, through a thinly veiled proxy.

Alas, Ms. Rachel could not resist shifting blame onto Jews yet again. Beneath her apology post, an account named thepalestinenewsnetwerk commented, “Spoiler alert: They left the comment themselves.” Ms. Rachel replied, “Ooooooooooohhhhh.” Since Jews were the only subject of “the comment,” the pronoun required no decoding. If she were truly concerned about antisemitism, she would have shut the insinuation down, not joined in.

Such behavior explains why the comment appeared on her page in the first place. Antisemitism did not wander in by accident. It pulled up a chair because she set the table for it.

Ms. Rachel’s Checkered Past

Ms. Rachel has a checkered past of antisemitism, as previous Aish contributors have dutifully explored. This includes reposting debunked libels about the Jewish State and engaging with unabashed antisemites.

In the past, Ms. Rachel has collaborated with Motaz Azaiza, an activist who has openly written on Twitter “May God curse the Jews,” and urged followers to support Hamas. After facing criticism, Ms. Rachel refused to even recognize these concerns and continued her profuse public praise of Azaiza.

To rebut accusations of past antisemitism, she chose to make her case to Mehdi Hasan, a commentator who has claimed that the supposed “Gaza Genocide” was “worse than.. even the Holocaust” and who literally recommends “verbal abuse and name-calling” as a debate tactic in his book Win Every Argument (page 60). If she intended to reassure, Hasan was a curious choice of character witness.

The truest tragedy of the affair is that millions of Americans rely on Ms. Rachel as they parent their children, and she has turned that trust into a cudgel. Parents put her videos on as an educational resource to entertain their children while they make lunch or steal a quiet cup of coffee. She has betrayed not only that trust, but childhood innocence itself.

Past giants of children’s entertainment had their causes too, but they addressed children as children, not as foot soldiers in adult political battles. Mr. Rogers challenged racism by inviting Officer Clemmons to share a pool at a time when America still segregated by color. Jim Henson filled Sesame Street with children and characters from every background, including multilingual families and children with disabilities, so that every child felt like they belonged.

Their advocacy was beloved because they understood that when your audience still needs help tying its shoes, you don’t hand them a manifesto.

Mr. Rogers built a neighborhood. Ms. Rachel has built a Speaker’s Corner soapbox.