Furor Over ‘Anti-Zionism’ at the White House Religious Liberty Commission Reflects Confusion on the Right

The February 9 meeting of the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission, whose focus was on combating antisemitism and upholding religious freedom, wasn’t expected to generate anything of particular interest.The commission, which falls under the Department of Justice, advises the White House Faith Office and the Domestic Policy Council on religious liberty policies in the country.Members were expected, as indeed happened, to hear testimony from legal eagles, religious leaders and Jewish students describing and decrying hostility to Jews, and calling for stronger protection of Jewish people and institutions.Ah, but news there was. One member of the commission, a former Miss California USA and conservative activist, Carrie Prejean Boller, tried to use the meeting to attack “Zionism” — i.e. Israel and her supporters.A former Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean Boller, attends a press conference at Trump Tower on May 12, 2009. Michael Loccisano/Getty ImagesThe meeting, which was chaired by Texas’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, took a downhill turn when Ms. Prejean Boller spoke up in defense of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.Mr. Carlson recently hosted and promoted a Nazi apologist and Holocaust denier, Darryl Cooper. Ms. Owens encouraged her audience to read an antisemitic text that claims that Jews ritually murdered Christians and drank their blood, and called Ben Shapiro a member of the “synagogue of Satan.” As Mr. Carlson might add, just saying.Ms. Prejean Boller also said that her Catholic faith — to which she converted last spring — informs her anti-Zionism convictions. Convictions amply evident in the American/Palestinian flags pin she wore to the session.She asked those testifying before the body if believing that Jews killed Jesus constituted antisemitism, and brought up the “mass killings of civilians in Gaza,” which, in the de rigueur if counterfactual cant of the day, she labeled a “genocide.”“I’m a Catholic,” she declared, with zeal not uncommon to neophytes, “and Catholics do not embrace Zionism, just so you know.”“So,” she challenged those who had recounted their having experienced antisemitism, “are all Catholics antisemites?”Two days later, the commission chairman, Mr. Patrick, announced that “no member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue” and revoked the angry activist’s membership.For her part, Ms. Prejean Boller was unrepentant. Accusing the commission of having “a Zionist agenda,” she posted on social media that “I would rather die than bend the knee to Israel.”The lady’s attempt — and that of a number of other such folks — to divorce hatred of Israel from hatred of Jews, though, deserves some scrutiny.There certainly may be some true anti-Zionist outliers out there who have nothing against Jews and vent their spleen only, for some reason, against Israel (and not Myanmar, Communist China, or Sudan). Ms. Prejean Boller may be among them; I cannot know what is in her heart. Outliers, though, they remain.What would seem pertinent, if uncomfortable to such idealistic anti-Zionists, is the fact that so many haters of Israel seem to enjoy deriding, threatening and attacking not only Israelis but Jews everywhere. Are things like an attack on a yarmulke-wearing citizen walking down a New York street, or the setting aflame of a French synagogue, or the mowing down of Jews on an Australian beach — or any of countless recent acts of violence against Jews around the world committed “in the name of Gaza” — anti-Israel… or antisemitic? Is the answer really unclear?While there might be some way of interpreting “Globalize the Intifada” as something other than “attack Jews everywhere,” I’m not imaginative enough to come up with it.A Venn diagram with circles representing people voicing anti-Israel sentiment and people harboring anti-Jewish hostility, respectively, would yield a broad overlap of the two, with only the slimmest arcs outside the intersection. In 2023, New York City authorities investigating a series of attacks on Jews reported that, while plotting the assaults, one of the perpetrators advised the others in a group chat, “Remember, don’t chant out Jews, it’s the Zionists.”

Furor Over ‘Anti-Zionism’ at the White House Religious Liberty Commission Reflects Confusion on the Right

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