Nas Daily and Ms. Rachel: A tale of two YouTubers

Last week, the news gave us a stark lesson in moral absurdity. Two seemingly unrelated events showed us just how warped the narratives of Western media are and how much effort is being put into policing the discourse on Palestine and Israel.

At the start of December, pro-Israel group Stop Antisemitism announced that Rachel Griffin Accurso -  known to children and parents everywhere as Ms. Rachel – had been shortlisted for its “Antisemite of the Year” award.

She managed to make the list ahead of far-right figures like Nick Fuentes, who has previously said that Jews “had no place in Western civilisation” and expressed dismay at not even being included on Stop Antisemitism’s list.

On the same day, another YouTube star, Nuseir Yassin, better known as Nas Daily, made a 15 minute appearance on Tom Swarbrick’s show on LBC radio, where his pro-Israel views ensured that he was treated as an "expert".

Nas Daily, a Palestinian born in Israel, became a runaway phenomenon in 2017, after launching a project to make 1,000 one-minute videos from around the world.

He quickly gained millions of followers and became a ubiquitous presence on social media. Though his popularity has faded in recent years, following a series of controversies, it appears that he is now being reinvented.

Ms Rachel's videos – originally intended to help her own son with delayed speech – have become popular with children and busy parents everywhere.

Her genuine affection for children is one of the main factors behind her popularity and although a non-political figure, she has spoken out for children in war zones around the world – including children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Israeli children from the Bibas family who were killed in the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.

What makes someone like this a contender for “antisemite of the year”?

Ms. Rachel’s crime basically was to humanise Palestinian children. She previously featured Rahaf, a three-year-old girl who lost both her legs in an Israeli strike, singing and dancing on her show in a short video segment that was striking in both how uplifting and how tragically heartbreaking it was.

In a May interview with US-based journalist Mehdi Hasan, she admitted that she knew little about the situation in Gaza before the war started in 2023, but could no longer remain silent after seeing videos of what was happening to children in the territory.

There are of course, tens of thousands of children like Rahaf who the world doesn’t get to see. Ms. Rachel has posted about dozens of them on her Instagram account, and mentioned statistics from the Gaza health ministry about how many children were killed.

These have consistently been verified by the UN, Human Rights Watch and other organisations but posts about dead children in Gaza are enough to make Ms. Rachel a “Hamas propagandist” according to Stop Antisemitism and right-wing American media.

She has been continuously doxed and harassed for her refusal to remain silent and has even needed extra security as a consequence.

“I have two kids who shouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of this. Remembering my son accidentally overhearing us talking about my safety and then him crying wanting hold my hand all night scared something would happen to me. This has taken such a toll on me and my family and all I’ve wanted was to help kids,” she wrote on Instagram on Friday.

Free pass for propaganda

Her story is a stark contrast to the treatment of Nas Daily, who is effectively brought back from the dead as an "expert" on the Middle East, spending his time denying genocide.

Nas’s main argument was that “by far the worst thing for a Palestinian is not Israel. It is our fellow countrymen. It’s the other Palestinian with an AK-47, aka Hamas.”

By framing the context in this way, he is wiping out everything Israel had done to Palestinians in Gaza over the past two years. Over 70,000 Palestinians killed by Israel; children bombed, maimed, and deliberately shot at; entire neighbourhoods erased and vicious airstrikes on the tents of displaced people; Palestinian prisoners tortured, raped, and starved in prison – all this didn’t matter.

What was happening was the fault of the Palestinians and any argument that they were resisting oppression and occupation was “bullshit”.

Apparently, people in the West shouldn’t even have opinions about what was going on. “I know I am more qualified to talk than the average Swedish person or the average immigrant in Birmingham,” Nas told a silent, seemingly approving Swarbrick. The latter dog-whistle set the stage for a rant later on about how “dangerous” immigrants were to the West.

Nas Daily, Loay Alshareef, Amjad Taha - all UAE based disinfluencers all conveniently pushing the same narratives about immigration to Europe. All being platformed uncritically because western media love an anti Muslim Muslim https://t.co/tFol4yBs4w

— Marc Owen Jones (@marcowenjones) December 2, 2025

“My opinion should matter more than that of the average person,” Nas proclaimed.

Nas had shot to fame with his travel videos in 2017, with a winning formula apparently focused on “real” people and “bringing people together”.

However, things went south after he was accused in 2021 of exploiting 103-year-old Filipino tattoo artist Whang-Od and he quickly became the target of a massive backlash, losing hundreds of thousands of followers.

Born in the Palestinian town of Arraba in northern Israel, Nas Daily had also always deployed his identity as a “Palestinian-Israeli”- which he later changed to “Israeli-Palestinian” - in his videos. However, from an early stage, he appeared to disparage Palestinian suffering and promote Israeli narratives.

"Some Palestinians left, some got killed, and some stayed in their land. My people stayed" is how he described the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, in a video later deleted because of the outrage it caused. This was also a key factor in the decline of his brand.

The difference in the treatment of Ms Rachel and Nas Daily could not be clearer. It may be possible to laugh off the Antisemite of the Year award given by a pro-Israel organisation, but the threats and harassment are another matter.

Ms Rachel of course is not the only celebrity to pay a price for speaking about Gaza, and many other public figures, as well as ordinary people afraid to lose jobs and livelihoods, have been frightened into silence.

On the other hand, a faded YouTuber who has nothing to say except to absolve Israel of its genocidal crimes, repeat well-worn Hasbara talking points, and call the struggles of his fellow Palestinians “bullshit”, is treated as an authoritative voice by mainstream radio in the UK. This sends the message that only the opinions of those willing to dehumanise Israel’s Palestinian victims matter, and everyone else should shut up.

Nevertheless, Israel has been isolated like never before due its crimes in Gaza, despite the Herculean efforts of media in the West to distort and minimise what’s going on. The fact that a non-political children’s entertainer is seen as such a threat to Israel and its allies speaks volumes about how much it has lost control of the narrative, and how powerful simple compassion can be in the face of genocide.

Amr Salahi is a senior journalist and news editor with The New Arab. He has an MSc. in Media, Power, and Public Affairs from Royal Holloway University of London. Amr has many years of experience in media, translation and research, having previously worked with the BBC, ITV News, Al-Hiwar TV, and Iraq Body Count.

Follow Amr on X: @Amr_Salahi

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.