When we previously checked in with Liora Rez, who runs the nuisance group StopAntisemitism, she was trying to get some flight attendants fired over a Palestinian flag pin. Between then and now, she has doubtless complained about many inanimate objects associated with Palestine, but this week she is pleading with the government to take down what she sees as a clear and present threat to national security: Ms. Rachel, the lady who sings songs for children on YouTube.
Rez, the director of StopAntisemitism, reportedly sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, requesting that the Department of Justice investigate whether Rachel Griffin-Accurso is "being remunerated to disseminate Hamas-aligned propaganda to her millions of followers, as this may violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)." The letter was acquired by the New York Post, and the tone of the "exclusive" article suggests that while its writers know this is red meat for their paranoiac readership, they're not as certain that the entertainer, who recently played a game of hide and seek with Elmo and Cookie Monster, is actually a mouthpiece of Hamas. You can tell their hearts aren't fully in it when they include screenshots of a video in which Griffin-Accurso says a prayer for the children in Gaza, to "please stop hurting them."
This is the basis of Rez's agitation: Ms. Rachel has shown compassion toward Palestinians. She has said many times that Israel starving and killing children in Gaza is reprehensible. "I couldn’t look away from the scale and gravity of suffering I was seeing every day,” Griffin-Accurso said in a January interview with The Independent. "I know how crucial the first few years are for brain development and the lifelong effects trauma and malnutrition have on the brain. It’s a failure of humanity to deny children food, water, medical care, shelter and education, and to not protect children from violence."
Griffin-Accurso's concern for her core audience prompted Rez to outline a list of purported "anti-Israel propaganda to skew public opinion." This includes Ms. Rachel promoting "a 'starving child' from Gaza photo which was actually a cystic fibrosis case." Even the New York Post couldn't ignore the fact that this child, Fadi al-Zant, actually was starving. As the Washington Post reported last year, his cystic fibrosis required that he consume twice the calories of a child his age, and Israel's restrictions on food going into Gaza affected his ability to do so.
The rest of Rez's accusations are standard Zionist drivel: that Israel isn't actually killing that many children, Israel isn't actually starving Palestinians, Israel is actually very considerate in how it conducts genocide. This might be obvious, but it's worth saying it anyway: What Liora Rez is doing here is baldly evil. The natural reaction would be to categorize her as a kook and a failure in all other aspects of life, to ask if next she'll claim that Hamas is concealing a command center underneath Oscar the Grouch's trash can. Her habit of baseless accusations has led her into litigation, too. Rez is already a defendant in an ongoing defamation lawsuit involving former University of Michigan hockey player John Druskinis, whom StopAntisemitism claimed had painted a swastika on the school's Jewish Resource Center. Druskinis had actually painted "an ejaculating penis" and a homophobic slur. (A judge has permitted the civil case to move forward.)
It would be funnier if it wasn't so serious. Under Donald Trump's administration, college students are being swept up by the modern-day Gestapo for expressing support of Palestine in written or spoken form. Groups like StopAntisemitism, Betar US, and Canary Mission are being used as resources to single out individuals for suppression and threats. These groups and their aims need to be met with full-throated contempt. The Anti-Defamation League has no authority if you give it none.
While Rez's crusade and others like hers are extremely harmful and dangerous, they are also desperate. This is a thought I had after the unlawful detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, but I want to emphasize it again: Zionists are taking more extreme measures because their movement is becoming unpopular. This kind of derangement loses more adherents than it gains. Try to think of how morally bankrupt you'd have to be to summon the U.S. attorney general on a beloved children's entertainer who thinks it's wrong to kill kids.
