“Daily Show” host Jon Stewart on Monday explained why he’s felt “like a crazy person” as he witnesses the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s war on the besieged territory.
“I feel like I’m watching something that is so self-evidently inhumane and horrific and to be told that I have to shut up because I risk the Jewish state by speaking out? I would say the opposite,” said Stewart in an interview with Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart.
“I think they’re putting the likelihood of a surviving Jewish state much more at risk with this type of action. I think they’re the ones being [antisemitic] ... [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, with the definition of antisemitism, would probably have to bomb himself.”
Stewart, whose family is Ashkenazi Jewish, said he learned from Judaism that Jewish people are the “underdog” and said he’s “always looked at the chosen people as kind of awry.”
Stewart stressed that he knows what he’s seeing in Gaza, where experts have flagged a “worst-case scenario of famine” occurring despite Israeli leaders like Netanyahu claiming that “no starvation” is taking place there.
