When Candace Owens posted on X that American troops should consider “conscientious objection to Bibi’s Red Heifer War” and sign off with “Goyim stand down,” she was mainstreaming a blood libel — the ancient charge that Jews manipulate nations into war for their own occult religious purposes. The language was precise and deliberate. And it came straight from Hamas.
Owens was responding to Joe Kent’s resignation as director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. Kent, a decorated combat veteran and Gold Star husband whose wife Shannon was killed in Syria in 2019, resigned in protest against the Iran war, writing in his letter to Trump: “It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” He blamed “high-ranking Israeli officials” and prominent American media figures for an alleged “misinformation campaign” and accused Israel of using “the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war.” Kent even attributed his wife’s death to “a war manufactured by Israel.” Owens called him “an American hero, patriot and veteran,” and Trump “a shameful President.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rejected Kent’s accusations, stating that Trump “had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first” and that he “ultimately made the determination” to strike Iran “in a joint attack with Israel.” She called the charge that Israel manipulated the president “absurd.” Trump himself said of Kent: “I always thought he was weak on security.”
The most telling detail in Owens’s post was the phrase “Red Heifer War.” That framing emerged directly from Hamas.
The red heifer is one of the most mysterious commandments in the entire Hebrew Bible. The Book of Numbers commands: “Speak to the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid.” (Numbers 19:2) Its ashes, mixed with spring water, are used to purify those who have come into contact with the dead — a prerequisite for Temple service. The Sages themselves called it a chok, a divine decree beyond human comprehension. It is not a war doctrine. It is a purification ritual.
When five red heifers from Texas arrived in Israel in 2022 — brought by the Boneh Israel organization to help the Jewish people fulfill this Biblical commandment, Hamas’s journal Al-Rassala immediately published an article warning that the slogan “Al Aqsa is in danger” was no longer sufficient, because Israelis were already working to “Judaize the holy mosques.” At a street rally in Gaza, speakers warned that Jews would hold religious ceremonies on the Temple Mount, called for a general uprising, and demanded action.
On the 100th day of the war, Hamas military spokesman Abu Ubaida, listing the group’s stated justifications for the October 7 massacre, accused Jews of “bringing red cows” to the Holy Land. Hamas called its assault the “Al-Aqsa Wave” — a deliberate reframing of mass murder as religious self-defense against an imagined Jewish plot to destroy the Temple Mount’s Islamic shrines and build a Third Temple.
Owens is using the Hamas-inspired phrase, the “Red Heifer War”, translating the terror organization’s genocidal propaganda into English and delivering it to millions of American followers. The implication is that the war with Iran is not a geopolitical conflict over nuclear weapons and regional dominance, but a Jewish religious conspiracy — rabbis pulling strings, goyim (non-Jews) doing the dying. “Goyim stand down” is a call for non-Jews to identify themselves as a separate class with separate interests, pitted against Jews who are allegedly using them as cannon fodder.
This was perhaps Owens’s most explicit excursion into antisemitism. Since the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, Owens has increasingly promoted antisemitic tropes on her podcast and across social media. In March 2024, The Daily Wire parted ways with her following a series of statements widely condemned as antisemitic. Since then, her rhetoric has grown more extreme — from suggestive “political criticism” to openly linking Jewish symbols to occult practices and child abuse, echoing conspiracy theories used for centuries to target Jews.
In December 2025, Owens falsely asserted that Jews, rather than European and American merchants, were principally responsible for the transatlantic slave trade, claiming the evidence had been deliberately suppressed by Jews. She then encouraged her audience to read Der Talmudjude (“The Talmudic Jew”), a 1871 polemical text that scholars describe as a foundational pillar of modern antisemitism.
In February 2026, a post from Owens falsely claiming that Israel controls ISIS went viral. She has also blamed Israel for the 9/11 attacks and for the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. She has called Israel a “demonic state” and an “occult nation.”
A study by the Jewish People Policy Institute, analyzing nearly 3,000 YouTube video transcripts from Owens’s channel, found that 96% of her references to Israel were negative from the outset. In the most recent six-month period studied, roughly 75% of her videos mentioning Jews were classified as antisemitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Association definition.
The advocacy group StopAntisemitism named Owens its Antisemite of the Year for 2024. YouTube suspended her for antisemitic content. Australia and New Zealand denied her entry visas. Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU, published a 15-page letter rebutting her claims about Jews, Zionism, and Israel, warning that her statements revive hatred against Jews and lead followers to see Jews as manipulative forces controlling America and the world.
Jewish leaders across the political spectrum condemned both Kent’s letter and Owens’s amplification of it. “Kent’s reduction of Iran to ‘Israel’s fault’ isn’t leadership, it’s bigoted deflection,” wrote Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. Amy Spitalnick, head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, wrote that Kent’s resignation post was “riddled with antisemitic tropes under the guise of blaming Israel.” Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, warned that “scapegoating Israel and its ‘powerful American lobby’ for Trump’s decision to go to war puts Jews in danger.”
