OPINION:
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists crossed into southern Israel and murdered roughly 1,200 people, including approximately 40 Americans.
They abducted approximately 250 hostages and took them into the Gaza Strip. Some of those hostages were infants and toddlers.
Kfir Bibas was 9 months old. His brother, Ariel, was 4 years old. Terrorists took them from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz along with their mother, Shiri. They never came home alive.
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Their father, Yarden, was abducted separately and held in captivity for 484 days before being released. He returned to an empty world, forced to bury his wife and both of his little boys.
Those children were the exact ages of the millions who sit transfixed every morning watching YouTube star Ms. Rachel. As a parent, I find this irony impossible to ignore.
Rachel Accurso has built something rare: the unguarded trust of millions of toddlers and parents. Families have welcomed her into their living rooms under an expectation of basic decency, warmth and neutrality. Still, that trust carries a moral responsibility — one that she has systematically abandoned.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Ms. Accurso has transformed her massive platform — spanning more than 21 million YouTube subscribers and nearly 5 million on Instagram — into a vehicle for intense geopolitical demonization. She has repeatedly asserted as indisputable fact that Israel is guilty of “genocide,” an inflammatory legal charge that remains disputed and unresolved in international law.
She routinely polices other artists who refuse to adopt her rhetoric, for example, publicly berating singer Ed Sheeran for having “caved” when he dropped rapper Macklemore from his tour following a controversy over Macklemore’s inflammatory rhetoric. She has publicly boasted of rejecting meetings with peers who stay silent.
Her stance on Hamas: total moral asymmetry. In July 2025, after months of intense public backlash, Ms. Accurso finally issued a belated, defensive statement condemning the atrocities of Oct. 7 and Hamas — tucked defensively inside an essay condemning Israel.
So that is one grudging acknowledgment of a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization that murdered Americans, against hundreds of posts targeting the Jewish state.
In January, Ms. Accurso’s verified Instagram account liked a comment declaring: “Free America from the Jews.” She later claimed it was an accidental misclick, saying, “I’m old, so I am not as good with touching things online.”
Parents noticed, and we have not forgotten.
This matters because Ms. Rachel is not a typical political commentator. She is an early-childhood icon. Toddlers learn their first words from her lips. Corporate America has commercialized that sacred trust at massive scale: Netflix streams her show to tens of millions of homes, while Spin Master plush dolls and toys occupy prime shelf space at Target, Walmart and Amazon.
These corporations are not passive observers. They are actively cashing the checks while lending their global brands to someone using her educator authority to normalize hostility against Jewish communities.
Corporate America has spent a decade claiming allegiance to inclusion, safety and brand responsibility. Talent has been dropped within hours for far less. If a beloved preschool entertainer spent years relentlessly assailing any other minority, nationality or faith, corporate boardrooms would pull the plug before sunset.
So why are Jewish families and American victims of terrorism held to a different standard?
I grieve for every innocent life lost in this conflict, Palestinian children included. Any decent person does. Still, children’s icons cannot spend years demonizing an entire people, excusing terrorism by omission and then expect Jewish and American parents to keep purchasing their branded plush toys without consequence.
Ms. Accurso has a First Amendment right to state whatever opinions she holds. Yet Netflix, Spin Master, Target and Walmart are under no obligation to finance, distribute or validate them.
Where is your line? If it is not drawn at the laundering of hate against Jewish families and silence on American terrorist victims, it does not exist at all.
That is why I started a petition on Change.org asking Netflix and Spin Master to cut ties with Ms. Accurso. You can add your name at change.org/MsRachel.
• Erez Levin is a father, civic advocate, author of the Substack publication Holding the Line and the organizer of the Change.org petition calling on Netflix and Spin Master to cut commercial ties with Rachel Accurso.
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