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HBO and John Oliver’s Disgraceful Comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany in West Bank Analysis
John Oliver during the July 28, 2024, episode of his HBO show “Last Week Tonight.” Photo: Screenshot
What do you get when you mix a late-night comedy news show with complex political topics like the West Bank, Israeli settlements, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
The answer is, the litany of context-free assertions, mischaracterizations, and outright falsehoods that define the 30-minute profile of the West Bank on this past week’s episode of Last Week Tonight.
Instead of approaching the topic with sensitivity and nuance, British-American comedian John Oliver presented the topic to his audience through a black-and-white lens that pits the aggressive and wicked Jewish State against the innocent Palestinian victims.
In particular, Oliver’s misleading and superficial analysis rested on a litany of oversimplifications and context-free assertions, an almost complete disregard for the role of Palestinian terrorism in the ongoing conflict, and the use of morally-charged terminology meant to unequivocally tarnish Israel’s reputation in the eyes of his audience.
The Missing Context: What Oliver Left Out
Throughout his story on the West Bank, Oliver presented his audience with a simplistic overview of the topic, robbing them of the much-needed context and nuance to truly understand the subject.
Some examples of John Oliver’s misrepresentation of the facts include:
The complete disregard for the Jewish history of the region, including the fact that prior to 1948, there were Jewish communities and Jewish-owned properties in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. While condemning the Jewish presence in certain areas, John Oliver never presents his audience with the complex history that complicates his simplistic narrative.
The claim that Israel incentivizes its citizens to live in the West Bank, even using a lottery to subsidize housing there. Contrary to the way that it is presented, this lottery is not a special tool for sole use in the West Bank, but also exists for subsidized housing in pre-1967 Israel.
The claim that there is a two-tier justice system in the West Bank, one for Israeli Jews and one for Palestinians. Since Israel has not annexed the West Bank, it would be illegal to apply Israeli civil law to Palestinians. As well, all Israeli citizens (including Arabs) are subject to Israeli civil law in the West Bank, not just Jews.
The claim that the Israeli military court system (which applies to West Bank Palestinians) has a 99% conviction rate. As noted in an analysis by CAMERA, this statistic is based on one year (2010) and is likely due to the fact that military prosecutors have a high threshold for which cases to bring and, thus, only bring forward cases they are highly confident will lead to a conviction.
Oliver presents Hebron as being home to 200,000 Palestinians and “700 hardline Israeli settlers who have chosen to live literally above them,” implying some sort of ethnic supremacy. This presentation of Hebron ignores the city’s importance to the Jewish people, disregards the fact that the majority of the city falls under Palestinian Authority control (where Jews are forbidden to live), and dismisses the fact that, topographically-speaking, not all Jews in Hebron live above the Palestinians.
The Missing Puzzle Piece: Palestinian Terrorism
While John Oliver chose to focus his West Bank profile on Israel’s perceived sins, one thing the comedian almost completely left out is the role that Palestinian terrorism has played in the region over the past century.
For example, Oliver decries both the separation barrier and West Bank checkpoints as “physical obstacles placed in the path of Palestinians’ everyday life.”
However, while presenting these as examples of Israeli cruelty, John Oliver fails to inform his audience that Israel was forced to install the separation barrier and checkpoints after years of Palestinian terrorist attacks (including suicide bombings) in pre-1967 Israel that originated in the West Bank.
And when Oliver does mention Palestinian terrorism, he is almost dismissive of its importance and effect on both the Israeli psyche and the tumultuousness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
When discussing what he believes caused the Oslo Accords to break down, Oliver does mention “Palestinian militant attacks” but sandwiches it between settlement expansion and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, clearly placing the greater onus for the collapse of the peace talks on Israel while only paying lip service to the role of Palestinian terrorism.
Similarly, Oliver belittles the settler fear of Palestinian terrorism by comparing the number of Israelis killed in the West Bank over the past 16 years (150) and Palestinians killed (1,522). Clearly, for Oliver, Israel is a much greater threat than Palestinian violence.
However, to reach this conclusion, Oliver has to ignore the fact that these statistics don’t include the wave of Palestinian terrorism known as the Second Intifada (which ended in 2005), that Palestinian attacks are indiscriminate while the majority of Palestinians killed by Israel were either terrorists or engaged in violence, and that the number of Israeli deaths does not correlate with the daily threat of Palestinian terrorism.
For example, in June 2024, 57 terror attacks in the West Bank were foiled by Israeli security forces, while there were almost 400 instances of terrorism (the majority of which were in the West Bank), including shooting, rock throwing, pipe bombing, and firebombing.
Oliver’s “Moral” Case Against Israel
One of the most egregious aspects of this entire piece is Oliver’s use of morally-charged terminology to tarnish his large audience’s view of the Jewish State.
Early on in this segment, Oliver describes the founding of the State of Israel following the Holocaust and then quickly refers to the “Nakba” as the Palestinians’ “own collective trauma,” drawing a direct comparison between a genocide and the result of a war that was not initiated by Israel.
This diminishment of the gravity of the Holocaust is further made clear near the end of the piece when Oliver makes the grotesque implication that Israel is acting like the Nazis, saying:
A phrase that gets brought up a lot with regard to Israel is ‘never again,’ an anti-genocide slogan often invoked in memory of the Holocaust. And it’s always been open to two interpretations: There’s the one that means this must never again happen to the Jewish people and the one that means this must never happen again to any people anywhere. And in the West Bank, as in Gaza right now, it’s pretty clear which one the Israeli government has favored.
Only a complete perversion of morality could produce such a statement.
And yet, morality is what Oliver continually relies on to portray his view as the just one and those that disagree as immoral.
Oliver refers to the building of settlements as “immoral” and suggests the adoption of extreme steps against Israel by the United States as a moral step in the right direction, including conditioning military aid to the Jewish State and allowing anti-Israel resolutions to pass at the United Nations Security Council.
Oliver ends this piece by saying that the United States should “have the moral backbone that’s been shown by Ben & [expletive] Jerry’s,” a reference to the ice cream company’s decision to not allow its wares to be sold in the West Bank. (In an ironic twist, this decision was harmful for local Palestinians who worked for the Israeli ice cream company.)
I was very disappointed to see John Oliver use Holocaust inversion against the Jewish state. It’s one of the most harmful and hurtful forms of antisemitism.
It’s still so surreal that this is happening.
— Eli Klein (@TheEliKlein) July 30, 2024
The West Bank and Israeli settlements are complex and sensitive topics that deserve to be treated carefully and with nuance on the part of the presenter. While Israel is not above reproach, solely focusing on the perceived sins of the Jewish state is not conducive to fully understanding the reality in this contested part of the world.
Instead of acting responsibly, Oliver spent his half hour presentation on the subject spreading ignorance and misinformation, all in an effort to besmirch the Jewish state and inflame passions that are already at toxic levels.
Those who look to John Oliver and his alternative news show for information about current events deserve better.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Israeli FM’s Tweet Raises Storm in Turkey
Then-Israeli transportation minister Israel Katz attends the cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Feb. 17, 2019. Katz currently serves as the foreign minister. Photo: Sebastian Scheiner/Pool via REUTERS
JNS.org – A tweet by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Friday accusing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of destroying his country has garnered nearly 40 million views and has drawn a sharp reaction from Erdoğan’s supporters.
In the Aug. 2 tweet, Erdoğan stands in the foreground as a Turkish flag and the city of Istanbul go up in flames.
“Erdoğan is turning Turkey into a dictatorship just by reason of its support for Hamas’s murderers and rapists, against the stance of the entire free world,” Katz tweeted in Turkish.
“[Erdoğan’s Turkey] blocks Instagram, interrupts sports broadcasts because an Israeli athlete beat a Turkish athlete, threatens to invade a democratic country with which Turkey is not in a military conflict, and inflicts an annual loss of $6 billion on Turkish exporters by severing trade relations,” the foreign minister said in his tweet.
“Erdoğan is taking and destroying a Turkish state with scientific, cultural, technological and economic capabilities, and eliminating the legacy of [President Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk, who built a progressive and prosperous Turkey,” Katz concluded.
Senior officials in the Turkish government were quick to attack Katz and Israel in response.
The tweet also united Erdoğan’s political opposition. “We are not going to learn democracy and law from someone whose hands shed the blood of tens of thousands of children,” tweeted Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, a member of the secular Republican People’s Party.
“Everything will be fine, when Palestine is free,” he said.
Katz had tagged İmamoğlu in his tweet and İmamoğlu had to respond as he did in order not to appear as an Israeli “collaborator,” Channel 12 reported.
Other leaders came out in support of Katz’s tweet. “President Ronald Reagan once called [Libyan dictator Muammar] Khadaffi the Mad Dog of the Middle East. Today that title suits #Erdogan,” the leader of the Netherland’s Party for Freedom, Geert Wilders, posted to X.
Erdoğan, whose ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered a historic defeat in local elections on March 31, has become ever more hostile towards Israel and closer to Hamas since the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre.
On July 28, Erdoğan threatened to invade Israel. Katz called on NATO to expel Turkey in response.
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US Says Moves in Middle East Are Defensive, Goal Is Deterrence
Illustrative: The world’s largest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford steams alongside USNS Laramie (T-AO-203) during a fueling-at-sea in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in this photo taken on Oct. 11, 2023 and released by the US Navy on Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: US Naval Forces Central Command / US 6th Fleet / Handout via REUTERS
The United States is deploying additional military might in the Middle East as a defensive measure with a goal of de-escalating tensions in the region, a White House official said on Sunday.
Regional tensions have increased following the assassination on Wednesday of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the Iranian capital Tehran a day after an Israeli strike in the Lebanese capital Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a senior military commander from the Lebanese group Hezbollah. Both groups are backed by Iran.
There are mounting fears that Israel’s war against Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, which began last October, could escalate into a wider Middle East conflict. Iran and Hamas have blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s killing, and they, together with Hezbollah, have vowed revenge. Israel has not claimed or denied responsibility.
The Pentagon said on Friday it would deploy additional fighter jets and Navy warships to the region.
“The overall goal is to turn the temperature down in the region, deter and defend against those attacks, and avoid regional conflict,” Jonathan Finer, White House National Security Council deputy adviser, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”
The United States and Israel are preparing for every possibility, Finer added.
There was a “very close call” of regional conflagration in April, Finer said, when Iran launched an attack on Israeli territory with drones and missiles after what it called an Israeli strike on its consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus on April 1 that killed seven officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The United States wants to be prepared should that situation rise again, Finer added.
US President Joe Biden on Saturday expressed hope that Iran would stand down despite its threat to avenge Haniyeh’s killing.
The United States on Wednesday urged its citizens who wish to leave Lebanon to start making plans immediately.
“This is no prediction about future events. It is prudent planning for them and for our government,” Finer said on CBS.
The British government advised its nationals to leave. Canada told its citizens to avoid all travel to Israel, saying the regional conflict endangers security.
Haniyeh’s death was one in a series of killings of senior Hamas figures in the Gaza war and it fueled concern that the conflict in Gaza was turning into a wider Middle East conflict.
Hamas said it has begun a “broad consultation process” to choose a new leader to replace Haniyeh, who was the face of the group’s international diplomacy.
The United States and international partners including France, Britain, Italy and Egypt continued diplomatic contacts seeking to prevent further regional escalation.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, will travel to Iran on Sunday in a rare visit to discuss regional developments with his Iranian counterpart, Iranian state media reported.
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CENTCOM Chief in Mideast to Mobilize Against Iranian Attack
Illustrative: File photo: A F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, Red Sea, February 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed
JNS.org – Gen. Erik Kurilla, commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), arrived in the Middle East on Saturday amid sky-high tensions as Israel prepares for an imminent attack by Iran and its terrorist proxies.
The trip by the general in charge of American forces in the region was already planned. However, in light of Tehran’s pledge to retaliate for the targeted killing of Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh on its soil on July 31, his visit will focus on building a multilateral defensive alliance similar to the one that fended off the vast majority of the more than 300 missiles and explosive drones Iran fired at the Jewish state in mid-April.
Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese terror proxy, has separately vowed revenge for the targeted killing of senior member Fuad Shukr in Beirut on July 30.
Israel took responsibility for the Shukr killing, which occurred after Hezbollah murdered 12 children on a soccer field in the Druze Golan town of Majdal Shams on July 27. Jerusalem has not commented on the Haniyeh hit.
Kurilla is expected to visit several Gulf states, Jordan and Israel. Amman is an important stop because King Abdullah II played a pivotal role during the April 13 onslaught.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi will visit Tehran on Sunday to discuss the security escalation in the Middle East following the Haniyeh assassination, the Qatari newspaper Al-Arabi Al-Jadid reported.
US increases defense posture in the region
Meanwhile, the Pentagon said on Friday that the US is boosting its defense posture in the Middle East in preparation for an expected attack against Israel by Iran and its terror proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “has ordered adjustments to US military posture designed to improve US force protection, to increase support for the defense of Israel, and to ensure the United States is prepared to respond to various contingencies,” the Pentagon statement from deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said.
Austin ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group. In addition, destroyers and cruisers capable of ballistic missile defense will be sent to the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.
“The secretary has also ordered the deployment of an additional fighter squadron to the Middle East, reinforcing our defensive air support capability,” said Singh.
CENTCOM forces destroy Houthi missile and launcher
CENTCOM reported on Saturday that its forces had destroyed a missile and launcher of Iran’s Yemen proxy the Houthis in an area of Yemen controlled by the terrorist group.
“It was determined these weapons presented an imminent threat to US and coalition forces, and merchant vessels in the region. These actions were taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure,” CENTCOM said.
Iran planning larger attack
The Houthis could join the Iranian attack along with Tehran’s other regional terror proxies, with US officials expecting an attack “potentially larger in scope” than in April.
Three US and Israeli officials who talked to Axios reporter Barak Ravid said they expect Iran to attack Israel as early as Monday.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered a direct attack on Israel following the killing of Haniyeh in Tehran, The New York Times reported on July 31.
Iranian officials said that the drones and missiles would aim for “military targets in the vicinity of Tel Aviv and Haifa, but would make a point of avoiding strikes on civilian targets,” the Times reported.
However, Tehran said on Saturday that it expects Hezbollah to expand its scope beyond just military targets.
“We expect … Hezbollah to choose more targets and [strike] deeper in its response,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations said, as quoted by the official IRNA news agency.
“Secondly, that it will not limit its response to military targets.”
Report: Mossad hired Iranian agents to kill Haniyeh
Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency hired Iranian agents to plant explosive devices in the room where Haniyeh was staying in Tehran for the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian, according to Iranian sources who spoke to British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
According to the report, the original plan was to kill Haniyeh in May when he visited Tehran for the funerals of Iran’s President Ibraham Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who died in a helicopter crash on May 19. However, that plan was postponed after a large crowd gathered in the building where Haniyeh was staying.
Instead, the Mossad hired two Iranian agents who planted explosives in three rooms where Haniyeh was expected to stay at an IRGC guesthouse in the north of the capital, according to the report.
The agents, who were captured on CCTV entering and leaving the room, immediately fled the country, but left behind a source in Iran, according to the Telegraph. The regime in Tehran arrested dozens of suspects in connection with Haniyeh’s death, the Times reported on Saturday, including senior intelligence officers, military officials, and staff workers at the guesthouse.
“They are now certain that Mossad hired agents from the Ansar al-Mahdi protection unit,” an IRGC official told the Telegraph from Tehran, referring to the IRGC unit responsible for protecting high-ranking officials.
A second IRGC official told the Telegraph that “this is a humiliation for Iran and a huge security breach.”
“It’s still a question for everyone how it happened, I can’t make sense of it. There must be something higher up in the hierarchy that no one knows about,” the second official said.
“There is now an internal blame game taking over the IRGC, with different sectors accusing each other of the failure,” the first official said, adding that Quds Force commander Esmail Ghaani has been summoning people for questioning, arrests and possible execution.
“The breach has humiliated everyone,” said the IRGC official. “The supreme leader has summoned all the commanders several times over the past two days, he wants answers. For him, addressing the security breach is now more important than seeking revenge,” he added.
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