Bill Maher to Palestinians: Israel is ‘here to stay’
HBO’s ‘Real Time’ host airs a history lesson in Israel’s defense, says while it was ‘unjust’ that Palestinian people were forced to move, they need to ‘make the best of it’
The State of Israel is here to stay and the Palestinians will need to “get used to it,” US comedian and “Real Time” host Bill Maher said Friday night, in his final episode before the Christmas break.
At the beginning of an eight-minute talk on the background of Israel’s current war with the Hamas terror group, Maher referred to the Nativity scene, set in Bethlehem, “in the West Bank, on Palestinian land controlled by the Palestinian Authority.”
“To 2.3 billion Christians, there can be no more sacred site than where their savior was born, but they don’t have it anymore. And yet, no Crusader army has geared up to take it back,” Maher went on. “Things change: countries, boundaries, empires.”
The talk show host went on to list a series of historical events when lands changed sovereignty in war and population groups were transferred, including post-World War II Germany. While he agreed that these events were “unjust,” he said, “mostly what people do is make the best of it.”
Homing in on the Palestinian people, he said: “There were deals on the table to share the land called Palestine in 1947, ’93, ’95, ’98, 2000, 2008, and East Jerusalem could have been the capital of a Palestinian state, that today might look more like Dubai than Gaza.”
“The Palestinian people should know, your leaders, and the useful idiots on college campuses who are their allies, are not doing you any favors by keeping alive the ‘River to the Sea’ myth,” Maher continued, referring to a sharp rise in pro-Palestinian and antisemitic sentiments in US universities since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught in southern Israel.
War erupted between Israel and Hamas after 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst through the border from Gaza and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took over 240 hostages.
In response, Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas and launched a widescale offensive in Gaza aimed at destroying the terror group’s military and governance capabilities.
Continuing his monologue by comparing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to other global conflicts, Maher heralded Mexico as an example of building a vibrant economy, rather than investing in terrorism. “They got real… because they knew the United States wasn’t going to give back Phoenix, any more than Hamas will ever be in Tel Aviv.”
To applause and laughter from the studio audience, Maher said that Israel is “one of the most powerful countries in the world, with a $500 billion economy, the world’s second-largest tech sector after Silicon Valley, and nuclear weapons. They’re here, they like their bagel with schmear, get used to it.”
This was not the first time the US pundit has come to Israel’s defense. He aired a similar segment reviewing the history of the region on his HBO show in 2021, during Israel’s last military conflict with Hamas.
