Scholar challenges Ms Rachel’s Gaza messaging as antisemitism surges globally

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 07:00:47 -0500

In recent days, a curious and deeply symbolic moment has unfolded online — what some have jokingly called "the battle of the Rachels."

On one side is "Miss Rachel," a YouTube personality with millions of followers, whose recent social media posts about Gaza have gone viral, generating enormous engagement and emotional response. On the other is me: an educator, a scholar of Zionism and Israel, and someone who has spent her career thinking about how narratives about Jews and Israel shape the moral imagination of our society.

The contrast is not personal. But it is instructive.

Miss Rachel’s platform is extraordinary. Her audience includes parents, teachers, and young children who trust her as a source of safety, warmth and moral clarity. That trust is precisely what makes her recent political engagement so consequential. When influencers with such reach enter complex geopolitical conflicts, their framing matters. Their omissions matter. And even their casual interactions — their "likes," reposts, and endorsements — matter.

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Over the past months, Miss Rachel has increasingly used her platform to promote a singular narrative about the war in Gaza, one that emphasizes Palestinian suffering while largely omitting the context of Hamas terrorism, the Oct. 7 massacre, and the hostage crisis. More troubling still, she has engaged with online rhetoric that many Jews experience not as political critique, but as delegitimization and dehumanization.

When a public figure affirms or interacts with language that targets Jews as a group, even indirectly, it does not exist in a vacuum. It becomes part of a broader cultural ecosystem in which antisemitism is increasingly normalized, excused, reframed as "activism," and made socially acceptable.

We must be exceptionally clear: criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate and necessary in any democratic society. Debate, dissent, and protest are vital tools for moral accountability. But when criticism slides into rhetoric that erases Jewish history, denies Jewish peoplehood, or echoes exclusionary language, it ceases to be political critique and becomes something far older and more dangerous.

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This is where the irony of the "two Rachels" becomes meaningful.

One Rachel represents the power of mass influence without historical grounding. The other represents the slow, often unglamorous work of education: teaching individuals how antisemitism mutates, how language travels, how narratives shape belonging and exclusion.

And this is the deeper issue — if any influencer had engaged with content perceived as hostile toward another minority group, the backlash would be swift and unequivocal. Sponsors would respond. Media outlets would demand accountability. Platforms would intervene.

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When it comes to Jews, however, the response is often muted. Antisemitism is treated as ambiguous. Jews are told to be less sensitive. The rhetoric is excused as "just politics."

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This double standard is not accidental. It is part of a long history in which Jewish vulnerability is minimized, Jewish fear is dismissed, and Jewish identity is treated as uniquely negotiable.

Today, we are witnessing the consequences. Antisemitism is rising globally. Synagogues require armed guards. Jews are murdered at a Hanukkah gathering in Australia, outside a synagogue in the U.K. on the Jewish High Holidays, at a gathering for the hostages in Boulder, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in D.C. synagogues are burnt down. We now have parents thinking twice before letting their children wear visible Jewish symbols in public.

In this climate, influence is not neutral. And silence is not harmless.

The Jewish tradition teaches us to wrestle with complexity, to pursue justice and to guard human dignity — including our own and that of others. It demands moral seriousness, not slogans. Education, not outrage. Responsibility, not performative activism.

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So perhaps the real "battle of the Rachels" is between two models of public engagement: One rooted in reach without depth. The other in depth without spectacle. The question is which one we, as a society, choose to reward.

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Scholar challenges Ms Rachel’s Gaza messaging as antisemitism surges globally