Daily Wire hosts Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens have brought their simmering feud to the public, seeking to ‘destroy’ each other over a couple of posts that have scripture as their center.
Ever since Hamas murdered 1200 Israelis and kidnapped hundreds more, Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, has been raging about the terroristic attacks, both against the perpetrators and those who are giving them cover. He, like many in Israel, views the actions against the country as an existential threat that will only be mitigated by Hamas being decisively dismantled. Any collateral damage to civilian life, though seeking to be minimized, is the fault of Hamas, and responsibility must be laid there.
On the other hand, while Owens would likewise decry the worst attack on the Jews since the Holocaust, she’s also an isolationist and contrarian who has been playing the game for a long time. She’s been busy spending the last month engaged in “question asking” – a tactic used to say a lot while insisting she’s saying nothing at all.
In response to Israel’s activities in Gaza, she is not openly condemning them, but the “questions” she is asking makes it clear she sees some sort of moral equivalency and culpability between a dead Israeli that was raped, beheaded, and set on fire by a monstrous zealot, and a dead Gazan who was unfortunately (and occasionally unintentionally) killed in a surgical airstrike. As for whether there should be a cease-fire, if college kids protesting in support of Hamas should be blacklisted, or if the United States should even involve itself in giving aid and support to Israel in the first place, there are “questions” about that too.
The fracas came to a head after Shapiro told a group of students that Owens’ behavior and public statements throughout this conflict had been ‘absolutely disgraceful’- prompting Owens to weaponize scripture by posting a passive-aggressive jab at her employer.
No stranger to her shtick, Shapiro, who discerned that Owens wasn’t merely quoting that particular bible verse for the edification of her soul, utterly unrelated to the fact that her boss, who pays her a lot of money, called her out for her viewpoints and convictions.
Due to her obstreperous nature, Owens is not about to squander an opportunity to engage in some good old-fashioned faux-outrage. Owens feigned offense and purposefully chose to publicly and intentionally misinterpret Shapiro’s post, as if his concern was she was quoting scripture rather than the message she was seeking to convey with the scripture quoted.
It’s all so disingenuous. While Shapiro routinely butchers the bible whenever he seeks to interpret it, Owens has long ago mastered the art of wielding scripture as a weapon, conveniently bringing it out whenever it is the most advantageous and putting it away when it conflicts with her own unscriptural moral values. Her efforts in this instance to paint herself as a Christian being persecuted for her faith by posting are singularly transparent, and will only fool the ones wanting to be fooled.
