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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.

The post HBO and John Oliver’s Disgraceful Comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany in West Bank Analysis first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Conservative Pro-Israel Advocate Charlie Kirk Assassinated at University Event in Utah

Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist credited with amassing youth support for the Republican Party, speaking at the inauguration of Donald Trump in January. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect

Conservative activist and staunch pro-Israel advocate Charlie Kirk died on Wednesday after being shot during an event at Utah Valley University, according to a statement by US President Donald Trump posted to the Truth Social media platform. He was 31 years old.

“The great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” Trump wrote. “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family.”

He added, “Charlie we love you!”

Kirk — founder of the Turning Point USA nonprofit, which is credited for drawing masses of young people, typically a reliable voting bloc for Democrats, to the Republican Party — was answering audience questions when a gunman fired off the fatal shot which impacted his neck, causing him to become limp and bleed profusely.

Since the advent of his career, Kirk has been a faithful supporter of Israel, taking on activists of both the far left and far right who promoted rising antisemitism and sought to undermine the US-Israel alliance.

“There’s a dark Jew hate out there, and see it, and I see it,” Kirk told a student during a podcast episode which aired earlier this year. “Don’t get yourself involved in that. I’m telling you it will rot your brain. It’s bad for your soul. It’s bad. It’s evil. I think it’s demonic.”

Born on Oct. 14, 1993, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, Kirk formally entered the political arena in 2012, five months before the reelection of former President Barack Obama, to found Turning Point USA (TPUSA) — which served as a bellwether of declining youth support for the progressive consensus on race, free speech, and economics that took hold in American college campuses in the 1960s.

TPUSA grew rapidly, challenging campus primacy of the College Republicans organization and exuding confidence in conservative ideas at a moment when political scientists and other experts speculated that the Republican Party would decline to the point that the Democratic Party would achieve long-standing majorities in local and federal government.

Following news of Kirk’s death, the Jewish community deluged social media with tributes to Kirk and prayers for his family and friends.

“Please stop what you’re doing and pray for our friend Charlie Kirk. Many in the Jewish community are reciting chapters from the Book of Psalms, and I ask you do the same,” Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Jewish civil rights advocate, tweeted. “Something is deeply broken in America. The political violence must END. GOD HELP AMERICA.”

“We have no words,” StopAntisemitism, a Jewish civil rights advocacy group, tweeted.

Meanwhile, Jewish conservative influencer Emily Austin said, “With deep pain and sorrow, we mourn the passing of Charlie Kirk. May he rest in peace, and may God welcome him into His eternal care. This is a profound loss for the world — Charlie was a truly blessed soul whose impact will never be forgotten.” 

Kirk is survived by his wife, Erika, and his two young children.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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Lebanon’s Army to Disarm Hezbollah Near Israeli Border Within 3 Months in First Step to Restore State Control

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and members of the cabinet stand as they attend a cabinet session to discuss the army’s plan to disarm Hezbollah, at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, Lebanon, Sept. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Lebanon’s army plans to fully disarm Hezbollah near the Israeli border within three months, the first step in the Lebanese government’s plan to restore authority and curb the influence of the Iran-backed terror group within the country.

On Tuesday, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi confirmed to AFP that the government received a five-stage plan last week from the military to enforce a policy placing all weapons under state control.

The move follows Lebanese authorities’ approval last month of a US-backed initiative to disarm Hezbollah in exchange for a halt to Israeli military operations in the country’s south.

Amid mounting international pressure to disarm the terrorist group, Lebanon’s cabinet tasked the army with developing a strategy to establish a state monopoly on arms.

For years, Israel has demanded that Hezbollah be barred from carrying out activities south of the Litani, located roughly 15 miles from the Israeli border.

However, Hezbollah has pushed back against any government efforts, insisting that negotiations to dismantle its arsenal would be a serious misstep while Israel continues airstrikes in the country’s south.

The terrorist group has even threatened protests and civil unrest if the government tries to enforce control over its weapons.

But as Hezbollah emerged weakened from a yearlong conflict with Israel, calls for the Islamist group’s disarmament have gained new momentum, reshaping a power balance it had long controlled in Lebanon.

Last fall, Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, following the group’s attacks on Jerusalem — which they claimed were a show of solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas amid the war in Gaza.

In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah.

Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.

However, Israel maintained troops at several posts in southern Lebanon beyond the ceasefire deadline, as its leaders aimed to reassure northern residents that it was safe to return home.

Jerusalem has continued carrying out strikes targeting remaining Hezbollah activity, with Israeli leaders accusing the group of maintaining combat infrastructure, including rocket launchers — calling this “blatant violations of understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”

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Israeli Military Expert: Doha Strike Was Backed by US and Qatar Coup, Will Bring Hostage Deal Closer

A damaged building, following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders, according to an Israeli official, in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Israel’s unprecedented strike on Hamas leaders in Doha this week was not a rogue act of military aggression, but rather the outcome of quiet coordination between Qatar and the US that could bring a hostage deal closer, Israeli intelligence expert Eyal Pinko said on Wednesday.

The strike, which officials have said was planned months ago, came a day after 10 Israelis were killed by Hamas in Gaza and Jerusalem. Four were soldiers who died in an attack on an Israeli tank in northern Gaza. The separate shooting attack in Jerusalem, in which six Israelis were killed and several more wounded, was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” Pinko, a national security expert who served in Israeli intelligence for more than three decades, said in a press briefing.

Pinko contended that while Qatar publicly condemned the attacks, it also enabled them. “I am sure they were involved and the attack was coordinated with the [Qataris],” Pinko later told The Algemeiner. 

The most recent round of negotiations to secure a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal were nothing more than a “deception” by the US and Israel designed to gather Hamas leaders in one place “in order to set the timing to eliminate them,” he said. 

Pinko said the strike should also be seen in light of US President Donald Trump’s impatience with the stalled hostage talks, arguing it showed Trump was on board with assassinations of Hamas leaders despite public declarations that he was “very unhappy” with the attack. He also pointed to Trump’s comments from last month, in which the US president predicted the Gaza conflict would reach a “conclusive ending” within two or three weeks.

Qatar, which has long hosted Hamas’s exiled leadership, benefits strategically from replacing the terrorist group’s leaders loyal to Iran with figures it can trust, Pinko maintained. Doha holds billions of dollars belonging to Hamas officials and has no interest in letting Ankara or Tehran displace it as the group’s patron. The timing of the attack is also significant, Pinko said, coming in the wake of Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear program over the summer. “Iran is in a very bad situation. Qatar can easily overcome Iran,” he said.

Pinko further argued that the strike may serve to bring forward the release of the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza since Hamas itself was no longer a coherent negotiating partner. The terrorist group operating in Gaza had become fragmented, “divided into five families that are fighting each other” and sometimes giving the impression that “they hate each other more than they hate Israel,” Pinko said. Recent talks proved “there was no longer a decisionmaker in Hamas,” and this disarray had allowed Hamas leaders to drag out the process with unrealistic demands. Removing those figures, he argued, would leave room for Qatar to install leaders who could cut a deal. “This will make the negotiation process much faster,” he said.

Pinko’s assessment stands in stark contrast to the fears of some of the families of the remaining 48 hostages held in Gaza, who said in a statement they had “grave fear” the Doha strike could sabotage the chances of bringing their loved ones home. 

He placed the operation in a wider context, linking it to the revival of the Abraham Accords and US efforts to build a trade corridor from India through the Gulf to Israel and Europe as a counterweight to China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative, ending with Gaza as a key trade hub. “Trump is very serious in making the northern part of the Gaza Strip as [having] US autonomy. That will be the end of the American belt and road initiative to compete with the Chinese,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called on Qatar, which “gives safe haven [and] harbors terrorists,” to expel them or bring them to justice, adding that if they don’t, “we will.”

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, for his part said his country would retaliate over the strike, and accused Netanyahu of “wasting” Qatar’s time in negotiations and “leading the Middle East to chaos.”

Pinko called out Doha for its “duplicity” in pretending to be a peacemaker on the one hand, while “fueling Hamas and hatred” in the US and Europe, on the other. 

“They are against Israel in their DNA. They don’t want Israel to exist,” he said. “So Gaza and Hamas are a very important asset for them.”

Some critics have denounced the Doha strike as a violation of international law, but international law experts note that Article 51 of the UN Charter recognizes a state’s inherent right to self-defense and that this right is not confined by geography if attacks are directed from outside its borders. The so-called “unwilling or unable” doctrine holds that if a host country does not act against militants on its soil, the victim state may use proportionate force.

The US relied on this doctrine when it killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in a 2011 operation that was widely hailed by Western governments and the UN, whose then secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said at the time that he was “very much relieved by news that justice has been done” and called it “a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism.”

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