How Hitler came back
Disturbing trend dupes the ignorant
Since I don’t follow Candace Owens, I was not aware that her increasingly anti-Jewish sentiments emerged from long hours of studying history and thoughtful contemplation of current Middle East political realities.
Just kidding. That’s not where they came from.
In fact, they apparently come from pure, undefiled ignorance, since her hot takes on Jews and Zionism apparently started without even a basic understanding of how things work in Israel.
For instance, within the Old City of Jerusalem are four quarters that have been in existence for many years — Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian. Without taking the 30 seconds it would have required to correct her own misunderstanding (Google is your friend here, Candace), she spouted off on the injustice of Muslims being forced to live in their quarter:
This is an exquisitely perfect example of people shooting off their mouth without knowing one blessed thing on a topic. Nobody’s forced to live in one of those quarters. Muslims live in other places, as do Jews and Christians. It’s like saying San Francisco requires everyone of Chinese descent to live in in Chinatown. It’s just… blindly ignorant.
The problem is, of course, that Candace is an “influencer” which means people (generally younger and equally ignorant on the topic) are getting “influenced.”
I was going to write about this after being in several online “Christian” groups where Candace and her views were discussed. Amid some concerns expressed about her anti-Jewish rhetoric, a shockingly large number of (mostly young) people praised her for her “bold stance” on Israel, and parroted her ignorance while showcasing their own, with statements like:
Israel persecutes Christians
Muslims/Arabs are not free in Israel
Israel never allows people from Gaza to enter their borders
Israel routinely tortures Palestinians and attempts to starve them or deprive them of services
Israelis hold Palestinians at gunpoint so they’re scared for their lives in the street (um, what?)
…all of which are easily disproven in a number of ways, not the least of which would be to actually talk to someone who lives in Israel. Or maybe talk to someone who’s actually been TO Israel, for starters.
Candace Owens’ keyboard warriors have no concept of history, except the falsehood they routinely repeat that Israel stole the land from the Palestinians. They direct none of their brainpower to considering how Hamas and other Palestinian organizations explicitly state their desire to wipe out all the Jews. Or how the Palestinians are raised to hate Jews, and how Israel has had to defend itself constantly from this terroristic mindset, with random terror attacks a distressing reality for all Israelis (Jewish and Muslim — explosive devices don’t discriminate).
Most distressing, for Candace-lovers who claim the name of Christ, they don’t understand the nuances of Israel having a right to its own land, even while the Jews still reject their Messiah. Many of these ill-informed Christians hold to the entirely unbiblical teaching that Christianity replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people. This is easily refutable via Scripture in so many places; I want to plead with them to at least read Romans 11.
It is also easily refutable via something I like to call “reality.” If God has in fact condemned Israel and there is no future for the Jewish nation, explain how Jewish people still exist given the many attempts to destroy them throughout the last 2000 years of pogroms, holocaust, etc. Also, please explain how Israel reappeared as a nation in the 20th century after not existing for 1,900 years.
Without supernatural intervention, that couldn’t be. Maybe when the Bible says God has not forgotten Israel, it’s telling the truth. (No “maybe” about it, actually.)
It’s not antisemitic to question Israel’s political choices, any more than it’s Islamophobic to question the political choices of any of the many Islamic countries. But real antisemitism — the kind that dehumanizes real Jewish people — is bubbling up again in all its ugliness.
Christians should be the first to call this out.
As I was about to publish this, I stumbled on this outstanding brief summary of where we are today with views on the Jewish people — and it’s not encouraging. I borrowed the writer’s title — How Hitler came back — because as a child born just a couple decades after Hitler’s abominations, I understood the phrase “never again” to mean we had advanced beyond the kind of rhetoric that led to the holocaust.
But we certainly have not.