Bill Maher blasts Democrats for silence on 'frothing' antisemitism: ‘Where are you now?’

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Bill Maher unloaded on Democrats, accusing liberals of staying quiet as antisemitic rhetoric surges online and on college campuses while Israel marked its 78th birthday.

During a monologue on HBO’s 'Real Time with Bill Maher,' the host argued that many on the left have become unwilling to push back against anti-Israel sentiment because of shifting attitudes among younger voters.

“There is a frothing anxiousness for the literal extermination of this one group [Jews] and, Democrats, where are you?” Maher said during the segment.

“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 said.

Maher blasted progressive activists and younger critics of Israel.

“You don’t tell your woke idiots that Israel isn’t a colonizer or an apartheid state, if you brats had to spend a week anywhere in the Middle East other than Israel, you would understand what liberalism is not,” he added.

Bill Maher blasts Democrats over antisemitism and Israel criticism

The longtime comic also addressed criticism from viewers who have questioned why he has become tougher on Democrats in recent years.

“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,” Maher warned.

During the segment, Maher argued that hostility toward Israel has become one of the few issues uniting voices on both the left and right.

“People say the left and the right can’t agree on anything these days. Well, there is this one thing they agree on,” he said before pointing to comments from media figures, activists, and aspiring politicians that he said crossed the line into antisemitism or anti-Israel rhetoric.

Maher also pointed to criticism coming from college professors and conservative commentators, saying the growing hostility reinforced the original argument for the creation of Israel.

“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?” he said. “If you don’t have the right-wingers on your side and you don’t have the progressives, what do you have?”

Maher referenced propagandist Joseph Goebbels while discussing inflammatory statements directed at Jews and Israel. “These are the kind of statements Goebbels would have read and said, ‘No notes,’” Maher remarked. 

New York Times column on Israel sparks backlash and lawsuit threat

Maher did note that Islamophobic rhetoric exists as well, though he argued it has not been embraced on the same scale as antisemitism.

As the monologue continued, headlines were displayed on-screen, including one from The New York Times discussing how “fear and vigilance” have become “constant companions for Jews."

The discussion comes as the Israeli government escalated its own fight with The New York Times this week.

According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the government plans to initiate a defamation lawsuit over a controversial column by Nicholas Kristof.

The piece included allegations from Palestinian men and women claiming they suffered “brutal abuse at the hands of Israel’s prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators.”

Critics quickly attacked the article as “propaganda” and disputed several of its claims, particularly allegations that dogs had been trained to assault Palestinians.