HBO host Bill Maher blasted Democrats Friday, saying liberals have failed to condemn antisemitism, calling out a seething swath of hatred as Israel celebrated its 78th birthday.
“There is a frothing anxiousness for the literal extermination of this one group [Jews] and, Democrats, where are you?” Maher said in his “Real Time” rebuke.
“If any other minority group was being talked about this way, you’d break out the kente cloth and have ten benefit concerts, but because you see that so many of your brainwashed-by-TikTok constituents now have an unfavorable view of Israel, you indulge them when you should be correcting them.” he added.
“You don’t tell your woke idiots that Israel isn’t a colonizer or an apartheid state or committing genocide and that, if you brats had to spend a week anywhere in the Middle East other than Israel, you would understand what liberalism is not.”
Maher offered a warning to the left, “Let me just say this to all who ask me, ‘Why are you harder on the Democrats than you used to be,’ until you fix this whole issue, stop asking me.”
During the “Real Time” segment, Maher criticized media figures and aspiring politicians on both the left and right for rhetoric he said fuels hostility toward Israel and Jewish people.
The HBO host observed, “People say the left and the right can’t agree on anything these days. Well, there is this one thing they agree on.” Maher then proceeded to call out both liberal and conservative figures who have indulged in anti-Israel or antisemitic comments.
Other criticisms from U.S. college professors and right-wing voices came into focus as well.
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“Israel was founded on the idea that antisemitism made a Jewish state [necessary] because Jews would never be safe without one. Can you honestly listen to this rhetoric and not see why that turned out to be true?” Maher said, reacting to the statements.
“If you don’t have the right-wingers on your side and you don’t have the progressives, what do you have?”
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He added later, referring to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, “These are the kind of statements Goebbels would have read and said, ‘No notes.'”
Maher also called out Islamophobic rhetoric, but argued its severity pales in comparison to the seeming embrace of antisemitism.
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Headlines, like one from The New York Times, discussing how “fear and vigilance” have become “constant companions for Jews,” were shown on the screen during Maher’s takedown, emphasizing the severity of hatred against Jews.
The Israeli government announced this week it will initiate a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times over columnist Nicholas Kristof’s contentious “dog rape” story, the Israel Foreign Ministry said.
Kristof penned the controversial piece headlined, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” that features men and women alleging “brutal sexual abuse at the hands of Israel’s prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators.” Many critics blasted it as “propaganda” and poked holes in the reporting, specifically a claim that dogs have been trained to sexually assault Palestinians.
Fox News’ Brian Flood and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
