When I stood beside “Miss Israel” at the “Miss Universe” pageant in 2017 and posted a simple photo calling for peace, I knew I would face backlash. What I didn’t fully grasp was how absolute that backlash would be. I lost my crown as “Miss Iraq.” My family received death threats. I was forced to leave my homeland and rebuild my life in the United States.
I paid a very real price for refusing to treat Israel as untouchable evil.
That’s why it was so jarring to hear Carrie Prejean Boller—a former “Miss California” and, until recently, a member of the President’s Religious Liberty Commission—declare at a media appearance and debate on Feb. 9 that Christians are “brainwashed” into supporting the State of Israel.
She added that she would rather die than “worship” what she called a genocidal state, and described herself as finally feeling “free” and “no longer in chains.”
Those words are not a policy critique. They are moral denunciations.
They imply that millions of Americans—Jews and Christians alike—are not just mistaken in their support for Israel, but spiritually captive. They recast a mainstream foreign policy position as idolatry. And coming from someone appointed to advise on religious liberty, they revealed a profound misunderstanding of what religious liberty actually protects.
Boller built her public reputation years ago as a woman unwilling to compromise her Christian convictions. She became famous as someone who claims to stand her ground when it was unpopular. She framed herself as someone willing to endure criticism rather than bend.
But now, instead of defending the right of believers to hold their convictions about Israel, she mocks those convictions as evidence of manipulation. Instead of recognizing theological support for Israel as a legitimate religious expression, she reduces it to brainwashing. That isn’t boldness. It’s hatred masquerading as enlightenment.
Her removal two days later, on Feb. 11, from the Religious Liberty Commission was the right decision. But what happened next is telling.
Rather than reflect on why her rhetoric was disqualifying, she has embarked on what looks very much like a victory lap, courting the attention of anti-Israel and openly antisemitic voices that are all too eager to amplify her remarks. She is doing interviews, leaning into the controversy and capitalizing on the notoriety that came from attacking Israel and its supporters.
In a media ecosystem that rewards outrage, she has discovered that there is an audience ready to celebrate anyone willing to frame Israel—and by extension, its supporters—as uniquely evil.
That’s not courage. It’s called opportunism.
I know what it means to take a stand and lose everything for it. When I spoke up for peace and coexistence, I didn’t gain any social-media followers. I lost my safety and my country. There was no media tour waiting for me in Baghdad, no applause from extremists eager to weaponize my words.
What we are seeing is the opposite dynamic. The louder and more absolutist the rhetoric becomes, the more attention it both gets and generates. Describing Christians as brainwashed and support for Israel as spiritual bondage is not an attempt to persuade; it is a signal to a specific crowd that rewards moral theater.
There is a deep irony in watching someone who once claimed to defend Christian convictions now deride other Christians’ convictions as captivity. For many evangelical believers, support for Israel flows from sincerely held theological commitments. For Jewish Americans, Israel is not an abstract policy question but a core part of their identity and history. Religious liberty protects those convictions, whether Boller finds them compelling or not.
You can disagree with Israeli policies, and you can argue about military strategy or diplomacy. But when you frame simple support for Israel as “worship” and cast its supporters as dupes, then you are no longer engaging in debate.
I grew up in a region where Israel was treated not as a country to debate but as an evil to eradicate, and where anyone who humanized Israelis was branded a traitor. I believed that America was different—that here, disagreement would not slide so easily into denunciation.
Boller’s remarks, coupled with the applause she’s now receiving from corners that thrive on hostility toward Israel, should concern anyone who values pluralism. Because, as we all know, the line between criticizing a government and demonizing a people can erode quickly, especially when public figures discover that there is fame to be found in crossing it.
I lost my country once for standing with Israel. I never expected to see someone in the United States gain notoriety by attacking it in language so absolute and so contemptuous of fellow believers.
Religious liberty requires humility. It requires acknowledging that others can hold deep convictions you reject and still deserve protection and respect. It does not require you to agree, but it also doesn’t require you not to sneer.
Boller may feel “free.” But if freedom means courting applause from those who traffic in demonization, it is a freedom built on the erosion of the very pluralism that allowed both of us to live safely in this country.
America should not reward that trade.
