Last night on HBO‘s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host took issue with the rise of antisemitism in the United States amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Antisemitism has increased in recent weeks, especially on college campuses. Cornell University student Patrick Dai, 21, was arrested earlier this week for allegedly encouraging others online to kill Jewish people and threatening to shoot up one of the campus dining halls.
FBI Director Christopher Wray recently told the Senate that antisemitism has reached “historic levels” in the United States.
Maher brought the topic to his panel which featured guests Ian Bremmer, political scientist and president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, and Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria GPS and columnist for the Washington Post.
“What do you make of this level of just gut-wrenching antisemitism?” Maher asked his panelists. “I must admit, I don’t think of myself as a naive person [but] I’ve been surprised. It was like a volcano that blew. I mean, just the people in the United States who [are like] ‘F*** Israel!’ You know, the ‘Any means necessary!’ I just, I don’t know where this comes from. I guess it’s ancient. Obviously, the hatred of the Jews goes way back. But I was taken aback by this.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t think social media has made it much worse,” answered Bremmer.
“So you think that’s the answer?” Maher replied. “Because it’s got to be something about the Jews themselves because there were other people around the world are oppressed. There are other ‘colonized’ places, not that Israel ‘colonized’ anything, but why this one’s nice. Why does this arouse, especially among young people?”
“I mean, the young people who hated Trump because he wouldn’t condemn the people with the tiki torches talking about Jews- you’re the ones with the tiki torches now!” he exclaimed.
Maher was referencing the infamous 2017 Charlottesville protest where white nationalists and neo-Nazis held tiki torches while chanting “Jews will not replace us.”
Bremmer then elaborated on his point about social media fueling hatred prior to Maher saying that Palestinian sympathizers “think of themselves as social justice warriors.”
“They don’t want to learn anything… They want to have a cause,” said Maher. “It’s not about Israel, it’s about this cause, the Palestinians. Like I said, there’s many people around the world who could have similar causes… This is the one that they latch on to. They don’t learn anything about the history of the region or who’s right and who’s wrong and where they’d be more comfortable.”
He then rejected the argument for “proportionality” in the number of casualties that each side should have.
“For people who wonder why they are doing it, is because if they don’t, their answer… is that if they don’t fight back Hamas, they’re telling you we’re going to do it again!” Maher said. “I’ve used the word proportionality, and I think there should be- but it doesn’t mean this thing where like, ‘Hamas is going to attack- that’s a given. And then however many they kill, then you get to kill about the same. You get to match it and then the war’s over.’ That’s not how wars work. Stop attacking them!”
Watch the panel discussion above and catch new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher on Fridays at 10 p.m. EST.