Rachel Accurso:
I think it’s sad to take someone’s dedication and love for all children and try and make that wrong. It’s not wrong. It’s wonderful to be an advocate for all children.
And deeply caring for a group of children who are in an emergency situation, who are starving doesn’t mean you don’t care equally about all children. That’s false. And it’s painful. But no amount of pain is going to compare to what people in Gaza are going through.
Every time I got worried about it, I just thought about a mom in Gaza who — I have a baby who’s 6 months old. She takes formula. I breast-fed my first son. When you have a baby who is crying because they are hungry and you’re looking at them and you’re feeding them and nourishing them, it’s just a wonderful thing.
And the thought for a minute that you would have formula miles away that can’t get to them — and I told my son today: “I’m going on ‘PBS News Hour’ to try and help the kids in Gaza get food.” And I said: “It’s miles away from them and they can’t get it.”
And he said: “Do they have cars?”
We talk to kids. Another kid came up to me today and said: “Ms. Rachel, keep help — trying to help the kids in Gaza.”
Our kids are looking at us. They’re saying, why can’t these children have food? It’s miles away. Why can’t you drive it to them? And the mothers are too malnourished to breast-feed. I just shared a poem by a Palestinian mother. She was one of the top 10 teachers in Gaza. And she — her husband is a novelist and professor, and they’re living in a tent, and they have four children.
One had a dream to be a surgeon. One had a dream to be a dentist. They — she said: “We’re not living in Gaza. We’re waiting. We’re waiting for food. We’re waiting for water. We’re waiting for our kids to come home and wondering if they’re going to be one less child in the morning.”
As a mother, she’s not different than me. They’re so dehumanized. They — people have made up stories about them. And it’s an excuse to conduct a genocide. And I just wish people could — I wish leaders would hear their voices and sit with Rahaf and her mom and see that Rahaf doesn’t have legs anymore.
And this girl is so bright. And every 3-year-old I have worked with across all communities, they’re all different and unique and beautiful, but they’re all the same. And to look at her, and for people to think that it doesn’t matter that they’re the largest cohort of amputees in history, it doesn’t matter that 18,000 children have been killed, it doesn’t matter that there’s that new acronym, wounded child no surviving family.
Like, it matters.
