Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire, wrote an op-ed for Fox News lambasting Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for what he claimed to be their anti-Semitic views. Shapiro’s criticism comes as a response to Tlaib and Omar, both vocal critics of Israel, paying respects to victims of the Holocaust.
“It’s easy for radical leftists and their Islamic allies to spout #NeverAgain while proclaiming that today’s Jews aren’t like yesterday’s Jews,” Shapiro wrote.
The right-wing firebrand is referring to the #NeverAgain hashtag, which trended on Twitter on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp and which Tlaib and Omar included in tributary tweets to Holocaust victims. Shapiro, who is Jewish and has accused the two of anti-Semitic views before, accused the congresswomen of providing “moral support to Hamas.” Shapiro did not provide evidence of the two ever showing support for Hamas.
“Vague expressions of upset over an event that took place 75 years ago are no substitute for the hard-nosed defense of Jewish survival that Israel represents,” Shapiro wrote in the Feb. 1 essay.
Besides the congresswomen, Shapiro has referred to his detractors—including other Jews— as anti–Semites without evidence before, yet has criticized liberals for using the term “racist” to describe, without evidence, people with whom they disagree. Let’s not forget he was once the editor-in-chief of a media platform that had no moral compunction publishing articles denigrating Jews or work by literal anti-Semitic white nationalists, and whose former chairman, Steve Bannon, was alleged in court documents to have expressed contempt for Jews.
