The chair of President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission announced on Wednesday that he has removed a Christian member from the group after she made anti-Zionist comments at a hearing earlier this week.
During the commission’s fifth hearing on Monday, Carrie Prejean Boller — a recent convert to Catholicism who was stripped of her Miss California USA Crown in 2009 after criticizing gay “marriage” — repeatedly asked whether anti-Zionism is necessarily anti-Semitic; stated that “Catholics don’t embrace Zionism”; asked a panelist whether he would “condemn what Israel has done in Gaza”; and questioned whether the modern state of Israel is one and the same as the biblical Israel.
‘Represents no one but herself.’
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chairs the commission, desperately attempted to manage flaring tempers on the stage, at one point recommending Boller have a coffee with one of her interlocutors.
Following the hearing, one of the witnesses, Shabbos Kestenbaum, criticized Boller, expressing disappointment about her decision to “focus exclusively on Israel.”
After stating in reply that she would not resign or “be bullied” and then suggesting in a separate message that the hearing had systematically excluded “Jewish and Christian voices that dissent from Zionism,” Boller leaned harder into her criticism of Zionism online, tweeting, for example, “I will never bend the knee to the state of Israel. Ever. I am more determined than ever to speak plainly about political Zionism and the lies we’ve been sold to justify endless war, dead children, and blank checks.”
While Boller made appeals in her messaging to the Catholic Church’s teaching that the new Israel “is called the Church of Christ,” she found critics among those Catholics she claimed to speak for, including Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
Donohue noted that while “it is possible for someone to oppose Zionism yet not be anti-Semitic,” those “who are activists for the anti-Zionist cause invariably harbor an animus against Jews.”
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Photographer: Callaghan O’Hare/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Donohue stressed that Boller “does not run a Catholic organization, has no Catholic credentials as an author or instructor, and indeed represents no one but herself.”
Among the other outfits and organizations that condemned Boller was the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial board characterized her as a dingbat and suggested the purpose of her theatrics was to gain online followers.
The National Review piled on, dubbing Boller “a lunatic antisemite.”
Among those who alternatively voiced support for Boller was the group Jews United Against Zionism and Candace Owens.
On Wednesday morning, Patrick noted, “No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue. This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America.”
“I am grateful to President Trump for having the vision and boldness to create this Commission,” continued Patrick. “Fighting for the Word of God and religious freedom is what this nation was founded upon. Leading this fight will be one of his greatest legacies.”
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