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Jewish Comedian Elon Gold Balances the Humorous and Serious in a Way That Few Can
Elon Gold. Photo: provided.
At a recent show at the Westside Comedy Club in Manhattan, Elon Gold thrilled a crowd by doing impersonations of former (and future) President Donald Trump and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
In a stellar Trump accent, he quipped: “They tried to get me. I saw the bullet. I saw the bullet. And I went, ‘I don’t like that.’ Then it just pierced my ear. I never thought I’d get my ears pierced…”
Performing before the election, Gold said that Doug Emhoff would be well prepared if Kamala Harris had been elected.
“If you are a Jewish man and you’re married, say nothing,” Gold said.
“Colonizers?” Gold asked. “Jews! The only place we colonized was the Catskills.”
Gold said the secular new year is fun because people get drunk, whereas for the Jewish New Year, Jews read from the machzor about possible ways to die.
“Who by fire? Who by water? Who by beeper?” Gold quipped.
He said Jews need to explain to people how Israel is not an oppressor.
“Jews are not in the oppression business,” he said. “There’s no money in it.”
One of the opening comedians, David Weinbach, a former winner of The Jewish Week’s Funniest Comic Contest, took the stage before Gold, telling the crowd that this Rosh Hashanah, instead of dipping his apple in honey, he’s dipping it into Ozempic.
“You gotta do what you gotta do to look good,” he joked.
Weinbach said he admired that Gold has used his platform to combat lies against Israel, as did opening comedians Eli Lebowicz and Talia Reese.
While some Jewish celebrities have stayed away from commenting about Israel, Gold has spoken at rallies and been extremely vocal in support of the Jewish State. He has also gone to Israel to perform.
While he is a master of comedy, he takes antisemitism very seriously. I wish there were more comedians who could be like Gold, but we are lucky to have him.
Gold was a recent guest on the Here I Am podcast of Columbia University professor Shai Davidai, who went viral with a video in which he highlighted injustice against Jews at Columbia and in the US.
“Why, when the Jews defend themselves and their country, they’re not allowed to?” Gold said on the podcast.
He also said that it’s an insane twist that Israel has been accused of genocide.
“No, we’re preventing genocide [by Hamas],” Gold said. “…Everybody wants to hate…”
Gold said the deaths of Gazan civilians are tragedies of the war started by Hamas, which bears the responsibility for the harm they suffer — especially because Hamas uses them as human shields.
“Israel wants not one dead civilian,” he said. “Hamas wants not one living civilian.”
Gold explained that he is able to compartmentalize the situation in Israel. He says that there are times he is filled with anger, but must do his job — although he cancelled his immediate gigs after October 7. Then one Jewish organization asked him not to cancel, saying they needed the humor.
Gold said he said the name of Hersh Goldberg-Polin every day in his prayers, and it was earth-shattering to find out he and five others were murdered.
In an old interview, Gold told me that four Middle Eastern men in a car screamed at him while he was with his family in Los Angeles in 2014, while there was a war in Gaza, and the man yelled to Gold that he hoped his children died, while his children were standing behind him. Gold went to the police, and it was not considered a hate crime.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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