Bill Maher’s screed against the left’s take on Israel included a particular slight sure to sting college-goers after they appeared to go “full Trump” on Hamas’ terror attacks.
The equal opportunity offender called it like it is Friday during the latest episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher” when his opening monologue took aim at those in the higher education system, and one Ivy League institution specifically, painting the victims as the villains.
Before turning to his guests, the comedian opened the HBO program reacting to the week that followed the murder of at least 1,300 people in Israel with a callback to then-President Donald Trump’s infamous, and oft-misrepresented, comments responding to protests in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017.
“It was a difficult week, very depressing week, I’m sure you saw Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza, broke into Israel, killed over 1,300 people: men, women and children, and then the college kids in America went full Trump and said, there’s very fine people on both sides,” snarked Maher. “What is going on? Thirty-four Harvard associations, student associations, signed a letter that basically threw their lot in with the killers.”
The good news was that the far-left and the far-right in this country have found common ground. The bad news is it’s that they both hate the Jews. pic.twitter.com/7mgVXS6JmN
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) October 14, 2023
“But there was a backlash because some CEO said when these kids now go for a job, they’re going to be blacklisted and…and a lot of the students are still standing by their position to support the war criminals, but they strenuously object to the word ‘blacklist,'” he further quipped over the farcical priorities from leftist activists.
As had been reported, in the wake of the attacks on Oct. 7, a joint letter from Harvard student organizations voiced support for Palestine and held, “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
“Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” the letter asserted as they referred to Israel as “The apartheid regime” whose “violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years.”
Harvard President Claudine Gay had done little to rebuke the associations as her own statement did more to disassociate the university from the organizations’ joint letter as she called for “rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame.”
During a discussion with his guests, Tablet Magazine’s James Kirchick and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I) former foreign policy adviser Matt Duss, Maher had further affirmed his position that “Israelis have always had the moral high ground, and I think they still do,” as members of the left aimed to present their own “very fine people” sort of moral equivalency.
Further aim taken at the college students, namely those from Harvard, named the worst school for free speech in 2023 by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, found Duss asserting that “if Jews do not feel that the left is a home for them, we will not have a serious and effective left.”
In response, Maher said that he would “agree for the sake of being positive here, that it’s a minority who believe this, but it is coming. But I don’t think it’s a minority on elite campuses, which is the mouth of the river from which most of this nonsense flows.”
“And, they’re very influential, and those are the people who graduate and become the a**holes in society,” the host added.
The comedian further went on to target former porn star Mia Khalifa who was fired from Playboy for vocal support for the attacks on Israel leading Maher to call her a “nitwit;” the Democratic Socialists of America for claiming Israel had occupied stolen land; and even brought Kanye West into the discussion, referring to his own joke on “blacklists” by saying, “Even Kanye said, ‘That is some anti-Semitic bullshit.'”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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