OPINION:
For decades, Palestinian terrorists have used children and other innocents in their war to attempt to destroy Israel. Although we have long known that the mainstream media are components of this strategy, we now see a children’s YouTube star being incorporated.
Hamas’ goal is to weaponize Palestinian suffering and use it as a cudgel against Israel in the realm of popular opinion. That is why the Gaza-based terrorist group intentionally locates its operatives, munitions, supplies and command centers in schools, hospitals and other civilian-filled areas. Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip have uncovered numerous terrorist facilities intentionally located near playgrounds and other spots frequented by children. The intent is not only to constrain Israeli action but also to gain a benefit from the deaths of innocents.
The terrorist group’s barbarism shouldn’t come as a surprise. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and other Iranian-backed proxies invaded Israel and perpetrated the largest slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust. Documents found on slain terrorists showed that they intentionally targeted elementary schools and youth centers. Terrorists had maps marking these and other facilities along with instructions to “kill or take hostage civilians and schoolchildren,” NBC News reported.
Babies were killed in their parents’ arms. Ariel and Kfir Bibas were taken hostage with their mother, Shiri. Hamas proudly filmed the two children — Ariel was 4 and Kfir was 9 months — being held by their terrified mother. The boys were killed by terrorists who, forensic evidence would later conclude, used their “bare hands” to beat and strangle the children. The boys’ corpses were then defiled in an attempt to create the appearance that they had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, as Hamas propaganda claimed.
Hamas unashamedly hides behind children and other innocents to kill. In this, it is enabled by naive Westerners who, from their positions of privilege, can’t or won’t fathom the systemic evil that is Hamas. YouTube star Ms. Rachel is an unlikely example of this phenomenon.
It started in May 2024 when Ms. Rachel started a fundraiser to benefit children in Gaza, Congo, Sudan and Ukraine. At the time, many children were still displaced in Israel’s north by rocket fire from Hezbollah, as well as children displaced from the kibbutzim in Israel’s south that were destroyed on Oct. 7, 2023. Yet these Israeli children were not included.
Four days later, after the backlash, Ms. Rachel posted a teary video on Instagram with a caption that said she had “cared deeply for all children. Palestinian children, Israeli children, children in the U.S. … all children, in every country. Not one is excluded.” Her words are belied by the fact that she continues to highlight and humanize only one side in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
As The Washington Post noted in a glowing profile, Ms. Rachel “has been working on a special episode … featur[ing] a guest star named Rahaf Saed, a 3-year-old double amputee from Gaza who lost both her legs in an Israeli airstrike in August 2024.” Yet she doesn’t appear to have featured an Israeli child who survived an attack on a kibbutz or who survived captivity in Gaza.
On PBS and CNN, Ms. Rachel falsely claimed there was a “genocide” in Gaza and that 18,000 children had been killed, but she appeared oblivious to Hamas’ use of child soldiers, something even The Post documented. Nor does she seem aware that Hamas could end the war today if it surrendered and released the hostages.
Ms. Rachel doesn’t talk about or likely even know that the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, the Middle East Media Research Institute, Palestinian Media Watch and others have documented how Hamas and Fatah use their educational arms to teach Palestinian children to hate Jews, even using words such as shahid, or martyr, to teach the alphabet. Fourth- and ninth-grade textbooks required students to use “martyrs” to calculate math problems. Palestinian official media had a children’s show, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” with a Mickey Mouse-like character and a bunny encouraging jihad.
Suffice it to say that this is a perverse education that will reap more tragedy for generations to come. It is also nothing new. A June 1970 issue of Life magazine features dozens of Palestinian children, labeled “Tiger Cubs,” training with AK-47s in a Palestinian terrorist camp in Jordan. Indeed, as early as the 1930s, the Palestinian leader Amin al-Husseini formed the “Nazi Scouts” modeled after the infamous Hitler Youth.
So much does Hamas indoctrinate children that in February, when Hamas released the broken bodies of the Bibas children, parading their tiny coffins, Palestinian children cheered.
Ms. Rachel told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour: “I put myself in the situation of an Israeli person watching those videos that came out, and it’s just excruciating.” Still, she doesn’t name that Israeli person or go into detail about any Israeli families and situations the way she does with Rahaf.
The YouTube star portrayed herself as a victim of backlash. She told The Post: “Speaking out for kids in this situation is more important than my career.” She told CNN: “I feel, feel, feel for everyone.” Until she does an episode with a child who survived the Oct. 7 attack or who was returned from captivity in Gaza, these are only words.
Palestinian leaders are weaponizing the hearts, bodies and minds of children.
“Peace will come,” Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir wrote in her autobiography, “when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” Tragically, her words remain relevant a half-century after she penned them.
• Karen Bekker is the assistant director of the Media Response Team of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, where Sean Durns is a senior research analyst.
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