Ms. Rachel

I know we are all set to hate the Bezos Post (happy to!), but this is a surprisingly positive profile of someone who has been on the receiving end of a huge amount of shit for having the controversial view that Palestinians are humans.

“I think it’ll be really beautiful,” Accurso says of the forthcoming episode, which is expected to air on YouTube this fall, but she’s also braced for those who will feel differently. On Instagram and her other adult-focused social media channels, Accurso has been increasingly outspoken in her advocacy for the children experiencing trauma and starvation in Gaza. Though Accurso keeps her commentary fixed on the humanity of all children — “Children deserving access to water, food, education and medical care is not controversial,” she wrote in one post — it has drawn a fervent outcry from some supporters of Israel. Accurso has seen hateful comments accumulate below her posts; she’s been the subject of derision from Fox News commentators; she’s received threatening messages. In April, the pro-Israel group StopAntisemitism published an open letter calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether Accurso was acting as a “foreign agent” who was being paid to “disseminate Hamas-aligned propaganda to her millions of followers.” This claim, Accurso says, is “false, hurtful and absurd.”

The criticism and controversy has weighed heavily on her at times, she says. But she keeps a screenshot of Mister Rogers and Officer Clemmons on her phone as a reminder of what it must have been like for Rogers to make that statement through his show. “I know it didn’t feel easy to do that,” she says. The scene was so simple, and also so radical, even if it doesn’t seem so now. She reminds herself of this, too: “I think, in time, what I’m doing won’t seem as controversial.”

Officer Clemmons and Mister Rogers share a pool on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” in 1969. (Fred Rogers Productions) The escalating criticisms and the threat of an investigation made her worry, at first, that she wouldn’t be able to spend time with Rahaf or film the new episode of the show. But she did not intend to be silenced. “Speaking out for kids in this situation is more important than my career,” she says.

And so, on a bright May morning, Accurso sits at a child-size table in front of a green screen in a Midtown Manhattan film studio. Rahaf sits next to her, wearing a new red dress, pink sneakers on her prosthetic feet, and an ecstatic grin. They are drinking tea, which is actually water, and eating cookies, which are real, and singing a song as they stir with tiny spoons. Accurso looks at the child beside her, and then she looks into the camera, at all the children who will eventually be looking back. She smiles.

“Rahaf is my friend,” she says.