Christ Is King

 

Jesus Pantocrator Chora, Istanbul

Daily Wire seems to be losing the PR war over their parting of ways with Candace Owens. But I believe their position is being misrepresented. People are upset because they supposedly called the statement “Christ is King” antisemitic. Christians are naturally offended by this.

But Jeremy Boreing did not say this. This is a straw man. He said that the statement ”Christ is king”  was “weaponized” to be antisemitic, not that it was antisemitic in itself. I agree with him that it is at best obnoxious, and weaponizing the statement, to say it to a Jew in the course of an unrelated argument. As a Christian, I think he has a good case that it is an example of taking the Lord’s name in vain.

Others are saying this shows Daily Wire will not tolerate any criticism of Israel. This is the fallacy of overgeneralization, or drawing a conclusion from insufficient evidence. One cannot know this from a specific instance, One needs to consider and address Candace Owens’ actual statements and actual criticisms of Israel.

What were they? First, she sent out a tweet on November 3 saying “No government ever has the right to commit a genocide, ever. There is no justification for a genocide.”

Given the date, she was apparently accusing the Israeli government of genocide almost at the beginning of their response to the Hamas terrorist attack. Their ground invasion had begun only on October 27, seven days earlier. While the case that Israelis are using excessive force may have grown since, this was an almost immediate reaction to the Israelis’ invasion of Gaza. Notably, the Hamas raid that killed 1,200 Israelis and seized hostages was not officially a “government” attack, but done by “Hamas militants” (Wikipedia). So Owens was condemning the Israelis, not Hamas. The implication was that Israel had no right to retaliate, or indeed to defend its citizens.

I can understand any supporter of Israel considering such a position immoral and beyond what they could stomach being associated with.

Owens soon thereafter objected to Israeli apartheid on the basis that there was a recognized “Muslim quarter” in Old Jerusalem. “These are the Muslim quarters, this is where the Muslims are allowed to live.” This is no more true than that the Italians in New York are forced to live in Little Italy; yet I believe she has never retracted the comment. I suspect this is what Ben Shapiro was referring to when he spoke of her “faux sophistication.”

It very much looks to me as though Candace Owens is an antisemite. She is prejudiced against Israel, and by extension probably against Jews. Challenged by Ben Shapiro for her views on Israel, she responded “one cannot serve both God and money.” This seems to me to be a veiled endorsement of the racist stereotype that Jews are only interested in money, and unscrupulously so. 

And, given the disingenuity of the case made by her supporters, I believe they too are primarily motivated by antisemitism as well; and by envy of The Daily Wire’s success. Envy also being the inevitable root of all antisemitism. They want an excuse to go after Jews and the Daily Wire, and Owens has thrown them some red meat.

It is disgraceful. I spontaneously use the same words Ben Shapiro used.