Whilst Ms Rachel’s words and actions amount to genuine activism, honouring her as a Woman of the Year does not, writes Nadeine Asbali [photo credit: Getty Images]
In a moment that feels both hopeful and yet falls short, Ms Rachel has been named a Glamour Woman of the Year for 2025.
Like me, anyone with a pre-school aged child will most probably have already held Ms Rachel as a personal hero and extended member of the household, but her unabashed and constant advocacy for the Palestinian cause in recent months — particularly for the plight of the children in Gaza — has catapulted her from beloved children’s star to one of the most consistent critics of Israel’s bloody genocide in an industry of figures who default to silence in the name of staying apolitical.
Yet while this moment deserves celebration, it also prompts reflection on the gap between symbolic recognition and the hard, irreplaceable and much less glamourised work of justice and liberation.
After all, the very same media outlets that might now be jumping on the bandwagon to praise Ms Rachel’s support for Gaza have themselves long been perpetuating the very narratives that have allowed Israel’s oppression of Palestinians to reign for decades.
The blanket acquiescence that Western mainstream media affords to Israel has been a critical tool in the manufacturing of consent for occupation and genocide, and honouring Ms Rachel’s bravery doesn’t replace media platforms themselves doing the work to hold Israel to account.
Pink-hued and smiley though she may be, Ms Rachel lending her voice to the Palestinian cause has initiated real shockwaves. Not only has she been accused of Israel’s favourite claim, ‘blood libel’, for speaking the truth about the genocide of tens of thousands of children, but she has been rendered a “Hamas sympathiser”, “Woke brainwasher” and has been on the receiving end of campaigns to ban her in homes across America due to her pro-Palestinian views.
The pro-Israel group StopAntisemitism even urged the US Department of Justice to investigate whether Ms Rachel was “being remunerated to disseminate Hamas-aligned propaganda to her millions of followers”.
In the mind of the western establishment, Ms Rachel has catapulted from harmless children’s star to dangerous disruptor of the status quo and that’s precisely because her activism offers a blueprint for us all. She has gone beyond the placid, depoliticised niceties which major celebrities usually use to speak out about atrocities, cautious to look like they are making a stand without ruffling the wrong feathers.
In contrast, Ms Rachel has shared on social media that she refuses to work with anyone who hasn’t spoken up on Gaza and is willing to risk her career to advocate for Palestinian children, which is an example of moral clarity rarely seen in a media and entertainment industry which too often aids and abets Zionism.
Ms Rachel’s activism reinforces the idea that anyone silent on genocide is, by extension, complicit, and they should be boycotted as readily as the corporations that profit off the destruction of Palestinian lives and land. It unpacks the notion that the chasing of wealth and fame can and should come before all else, even one’s conscience.
Not only this, but she has made an active effort to humanise and bring into the spotlight the victims of Israel’s bloody campaign of terror — something that the mainstream media scarcely ever bothers to do.
By inviting onto her show survivors of genocide, such as three-year-old double-amputee Rahaf, Ms Rachel shatters the illusion that this is a war of equals or that this is about mere statistics. The image of a toddler whose legs have been blown off by a state that receives the backing and funding of our own governments is a reminder to us all that unless we speak up, we risk complicity ourselves.
All of this is to say that whilst Ms Rachel’s words and actions amount to genuine activism, honouring her as a Woman of the Year does not. Ironically, this is exemplified by the article covering her nomination itself, which features the words ‘Israel’, ‘Zionism’ and ‘genocide’ precisely zero times. It is not enough for media outlets, more than two years into a genocide that they have either actively supported or conveniently ignored, to suddenly applaud the likes of Ms Rachel, who have risked it all to stand up to Israel. And it is certainly not enough to celebrate Palestine’s loudest western advocates whilst ignoring the unsettling reality that this genocide is far from over and that Israel continues its brutal massacre of the people of Gaza as we speak — not to mention its wider violent occupation of Palestine.
