JTA — The Trump administration’s Religious Liberties Commission was wracked again this week over anti-Israel sentiment, as a second affiliated individual has exited while claiming it had been hijacked by a “Zionist political agenda.”

Sameerah Munshi, a Muslim member of a board that advises the commission, announced late Thursday that she would be stepping down.

Her reason, she said, was to protest the dismissal of commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller, who was ousted last month after she used a hearing on antisemitism to expound on her objections to Israel and Zionism.

“In this country, people of faith are having their free expression stripped away, and even their lives put at risk, because of their deeply held beliefs about Palestine, all for the sake of a Zionist political agenda,” Munshi wrote in a resignation letter she posted to Substack.

“The removal of a Catholic commissioner for expressing dissenting views grounded in her faith is the exact affront to free expression and religious liberty that I spoke out against.”

Munshi posted her resignation to X just before 10 p.m. Thursday, hours after an attacker drove a car into a Michigan synagogue while a preschool was in session. She did not mention the incident in her letter, which she said instead was timed to Prejean Boller’s formal ousting by Trump earlier that day.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations praised both Munshi and Prejean Boller on Friday for their “courage.”

“Ms. Prejean Boller and Ms. Munshi fulfilled the commission’s stated purpose by opposing all forms of anti-religious bigotry and standing up for every person’s right to express their religious beliefs, including opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” the council said in a statement.

Israel has angrily denied committing genocide in the Strip, where war was sparked following the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.

“The commission is now clearly meant to protect Israel from........

© The Times of Israel