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Amsterdam Club Slammed for ‘Gaslighting,’ ‘Lying,’ Succumbing to Pressure to Cancel Israeli Comedian’s Shows
Israeli comedian Yohay Sponder. Photo: Screenshot
An improv theater and comedy club in The Netherlands is being heavily criticized for “caving” to pressure from pro-Palestinian activists and making an “outrageous” decision to cancel performances by an Israeli stand-up comedian, while also allegedly lying about security concerns expressed by local police.
Israeli stand-up comedian Yohay Sponder was originally scheduled to perform two shows on Jan. 25 at Boom Chicago, located in Amsterdam, as part of his world tour called “Self-Loving Jew.” Sponder, who is based in Israel, is beginning the European leg of his tour in London this week and the second stop was scheduled to be in Amsterdam.
“Sponder is a comedian; his mission in life is to bring joy and laughter to people. He’s not looking for a fight. That being said, he is unapologetically proud to be Jewish and Israeli,” Kayla Sponder, who is the comedian’s booking manager and wife, told The Algemeiner on Monday. She added that her team is “incredibly disappointed” by Boom Chicago’s decision to cancel Yohay’s two shows after it faced criticism and backlash from pro-Palestinian activists.
“I knew that there would be feelings and reactions to a show that’s called ‘Self-Loving Jew,’ even though the message is self-love,” she explained. “We’re not tone deaf to the climate in Europe and the world, so we knew this was coming, I just didn’t expect it from club owners and venues. I expected protests and pushback, but it’s very disappointing. It’s a sad day not just for the Jewish community, but for culture and the arts when freedom of expression and freedom of speech is silenced and it’s not backed up.”
“I think they were honest about the concerns that were raised,” she added about Boom Chicago. “I think the concerns were real … [But] I think they made the wrong decision. They caved.” The venue’s decision even sparked outrage from politicians in The Netherlands who called the move “outrageous” and demanded that the country’s minister of education, culture, and science get involved to protect Jewish artists like Sponder.
Kayla explained to The Algemeiner that she had been working with Boom Chicago for roughly the last two months to coordinate Yohay’s performances on Jan. 25 at the venue. The first show sold out and the second show was nearly sold out.
“Everything was great. We had a great working relationship [with Boom Chicago]. Everything was running really smoothly until about two weeks ago,” Kayla said, before explaining an incident that took place at the comedy club.
A pro-Palestinian activist had walked into Boom Chicago, criticized the venue for allowing a Zionist Jewish comedian to perform there, and declared “Free Palestine.” After the incident, Boom Chicago’s sales and events coordinator told Kayla that Yohay’s performance at the venue would move forward but the club had some security concerns they wanted to discuss with her over a Zoom call.
Kayla said she and her team were already planning on hiring private security even prior to the incident, “because we’re not tone deaf to the current climate in Europe.” Only two months ago, fans of the Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv were targeted with antisemitic violence and physically assaulted, and even run over by cars, in the streets of Amsterdam.
“The security and safety of Yohay’s fans, staff that is working with him, and of course his own safety is top priority,” Kayla said.
When Kayla had a Zoom meeting with two staff members of Boom Chicago, including its head of sales and events, they told her the pro-Palestinian activist who entered the club sent them an email and informed them about more organized efforts by anti-Israel groups to protest and boycott Yohay’s shows on Jan. 25. Online groups, such as one called Student Intifada NL, baselessly called Yohay a “genocide glorifier” and an “ultra-Zionist” who “makes jokes based on Israeli propaganda.”
In response, Kayla told Boom Chicago her team would be in touch with private security companies, increase security at the shows on Jan. 25, and pay for it out of pocket. At the time of the Zoom call, the venue still gave her the impression that the shows would take place, she told The Algemeiner.
On Friday morning, however, Boom Chicago’s director Andrew Moskos sent an email to Kayla. He said that after speaking to police in Amsterdam, the venue decided to cancel Yohay’s shows for security reasons.
“Due to the climate in Amsterdam, public reactions, and concerns from the police, we cannot allow Yohay Sponder’s performance at Boom Chicago on Jan. 25 to continue,” Moskos wrote in an email to Kayla that was shared with The Algemeiner. “Boom Chicago has always stood for free speech. This is not a decision we take lightly.”
“The situation is tense here, we got a lot of feedback, police was concerned about the performance as well. At the end of the day we just can’t go forward with this right now,” Moskos wrote in subsequent emails. “It is just a complicated situation, it’s almost the most complicated moment of a complicated situation, those 50 Maccabi [soccer] fans certainly didn’t help the situation, that is for sure. That’s what sort of kickstarted the situation.”
Even during phone calls about the decision, Moskos repeatedly told Kayla that Amsterdam police had expressed security concerns about the performances. Kayla told The Algemeiner that when she asked Moskos directly if the request to cancel Yohay’s shows had come from police, he responded, “It has not come to that yet, but I think that that decision will and I don’t want to wait for that to come…we have negative advice is what where we are.”
However, the Amsterdam-based publication NL Times reported that Amsterdam police and the office of Mayor Femke Halsem denied any involvement in Boom Chicago’s decision. A police spokesperson was also cited as saying that they did not know about Yohay’s performances and never discussed security concerns with the venue.
“It seems like they [Boom Chicago] weren’t being honest,” Kayla told The Algemeiner. “Someone’s lying. They can’t be both telling the truth.”
Moskos also said in emails to Kayla throughout the weekend that Boom Chicago would help her team find a “Jewish venue or club space in Amsterdam that might accommodate you.” Kayla said the Boom Chicago team never ended up sending her suggestions for other venues.
“Who might be available at this late notice and willing to take the heat?” Moskos wrote in one email.
“He sent the most gaslighting email ever,” Kayla said. “I didn’t create this situation, I didn’t create the ‘heat.’ I didn’t create this ‘late notice.’”
In the aftermath of the event being canceled, Kayla said the Jewish community and pro-Israel allies have reached out and offered to help, showing what she called “an immense amount of support.” Her team tried to find an alternative venue in Amsterdam to keep Yohay’s shows on Jan. 25 but to no avail. They hope to bring his shows to Amsterdam at a later date.
In April, Boom Chicago will host a performance by Palestinian comedian Sammy Obeid, who recently concluded a tour called “Ceasefire.” Obeid has regularly posted anti-Israel messages on social media, accusing the country of genocide, comparing it to the Hezbollah terrorist organization, and criticizing US support for the Jewish state. He often makes jokes about Israel and has even done stand-up comedy routines ridiculing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
When The Algemeiner contacted Boom Chicago for a comment, and asked for them to clarify their involvement with Amsterdam police before making the decision to cancel Yohay’s show, Boom Chicago CEO Saskia Maas referred to a statement posted on the venue’s website.
“Unfortunately, following the announcement of the show, we received significant negative reactions, both online and from our visitors. Some of these responses were outright threatening,” they said in part. “As a result, we began to worry about the safety of our performers, audience, and colleagues. Therefore, we made the difficult decision to cancel the performance.”
“We are deeply saddened that this situation has escalated into a polarized debate about Gaza,” they added. “In our 32 years of existence, we have never experienced anything like this. Very nasty criticism has come at us from all sides, even though we genuinely tried to do what was best for everyone. We are using this experience to learn and grow. In the future, we will involve the City of Amsterdam immediately whenever safety concerns arise. Thankfully, we are now working closely with them on next steps.”
Boom Chicago concluded by saying that it will host an open discussion about the role of comedy in 2025. “The goal is to foster understanding and dialogue among diverse perspectives, without restrictions. We hope we can have a future where that is possible because humor can help bring people closer: Life is better when you laugh together.”
The post Amsterdam Club Slammed for ‘Gaslighting,’ ‘Lying,’ Succumbing to Pressure to Cancel Israeli Comedian’s Shows first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jews, Israelis Targeted in Austria Amid Surge in Antisemitic Incidents; Local Jewish Community Calls for Action
Illustrative: Pro-Palestinian protesters shout slogans and hold flags during a demonstration against Israel’s military action in the Gaza strip, in Vienna, July 20, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
Austria is facing a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel rhetoric, prompting outrage from the country’s Jewish community and urgent calls for authorities to take swift action against growing anti-Jewish hatred.
On Saturday, a group of pro-Palestinian activists burst into the opening of the Salzburg Festival — one of the world’s premier events for opera, music, and drama — waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slogans.
As Austrian Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler began his opening speech at the event, six individuals stormed the stage, aggressively waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Blood on your hands!” along with other antisemitic slurs.
The Salzburg Festival.
A frenzied white Austrian on stage, screaming in German about those bloody J*ws.
I’m sure we’ve seen that before… pic.twitter.com/b6oNyTwZRT
— Joo
(@JoosyJew) July 28, 2025
The incident raised alarming questions about the event’s security, as the six protesters gained easy access while wearing fake, misspelled staff IDs with fictitious names, revealing a clear failure in background checks.
According to festival director Lukas Crepaz, security measures and control checks have been significantly strengthened. The six activists were arrested, and authorities continue to investigate the incident.
Elie Rosen, president of the Jewish Community (IKG) of Salzburg, Styria, and Carinthia, condemned the incident, calling the disruption of the Salzburg Festival’s opening a “targeted political provocation, carried by openly anti-Israel rhetoric.”
“Jewish life in Austria must not become the collateral damage of political agitation,” Rosen said in a statement. “We often hear powerful statements at commemorative events condemning antisemitism.”
“But where are Israel’s outspoken supporters when real solidarity is needed? Antisemitism takes many forms and frequently starts with the silence of the majority,” she continued. “Hatred toward Israel is not a legitimate form of protest.”
In a separate incident last week, an Israeli couple was denied access to a campsite in Ehrwald, a village in western Austria, after attempting to make a reservation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.
According to local media, the couple attempted to register at the campsite, but after revealing their Israeli passports, they were denied entry and asked to leave, forcing them to find alternative accommodations.
“We have no place for Jews here,” the campsite operator reportedly told them.
When asked for comment, the campsite operators told the German newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, “These people should much rather take care of the many children in Gaza. Otherwise, there is nothing to say.”
In another incident last week, a group of well-known Israeli classical musicians reported being refused service at a pizzeria in Vienna after staff overheard them speaking Hebrew.
One of the musicians recounted that while they were ordering their food, the waiter asked them which language they were speaking. When they replied Hebrew, the waiter allegedly told them, “In that case, leave. I’m not serving you food.”
“The initial shock and humiliation were profound. But what struck us even more deeply was what came next – or rather what didn’t. The people around us were clearly startled, some offered sympathetic glances … and then, quietly, they went back to their dinners, their conversations, their wine – as though nothing had happened,” one of the musicians wrote in a post on X.
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‘All of Our Strength’: Over 1,000 Pro-Israel Activists Gather in DC for Solidarity Conference
2025 Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit. Photo: ICC.
Over 1,000 Jewish students, faculty, and activists amassed in Washington, DC on July 27-29 to attend the Israel on Campus Coalition’s annual National Leadership Summit (NLS), an electric event which achieved creating the atmosphere of both a festival of Jewish elation and an academic conference.
Founded in 2002, the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) is a nonprofit organization that describes its mission as inspiring college students to defend and hold pride in the state of Israel. One of its major initiatives is the “microgrants” program, which helps pro-Israel campus groups organize events about Israeli culture and society. Another, the ICC Community Impact Fellowship, awards college students a $1,000 stipend for completing a leadership seminar in which they are trained in civic engagement, coalition building, and rapidly responding to antisemitic and anti-Israel events on their campuses.
Demand for a spot at this year’s 2025 conference exceeded the nonprofit’s capacity to host the thousands of students who signed up to be a conferee at what is recognized as the largest gathering of pro-Israel students in the country. Hundreds were waitlisted and encouraged to reapply next year. Those whom ICC did select were flown out to DC and billeted at the Capital Hilton, all expenses paid. They were joined – for the first time ever – by a delegation of faculty from the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) and staff from most major Jewish organization in the US, from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to StandWithUs (SWU).
“We just ultimately believe that we’re better when we use all of our strength as a movement,” ICC chief executive Jacob Baime told The Algemeiner on Monday during an interview. “And we’re not the only ones who feel that way. The other side does as well, having mounted a highly professionalized coalition, well-funded, well-coordinated effort with many groups involved. We need our partners and the different perspectives they hold too.”
When The Algemeiner last attended NLS, the world was not yet one year removed from Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the deadliest day in modern Jewish history since the Holocaust. Jewish students and ICC staff, many of whom have family members and friends who were affected by the atrocities or were later drafted into the war it precipitated, were still laboring to comprehend what had become a new and unprecedented world – one in which classic antisemitic tropes had resurfaced to corrupt public debate, anti-Jewish violence occurred daily across the world, and anti-Zionist groups were taking over college campuses and converting them into outposts of antisemitic hate.
As such the event aimed to inspire Jewish students “take back the campus,” an effort advanced by an infantry of social media influencers.
This year’s NLS leaned more heavily into supplying students with information, facts, and statistics curated and presented by the most accomplished Middle East scholars, government leaders, and nonprofit executives in the global pro-Israel community. Social media influencers and celebrities took the stage as well, showcasing their strengths as spirited advocates who remind students why the issues under discussion relate to their contemporary experiences as young people and consumers.
Speakers included Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law; Col. Miri Eisin of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute; Miriam Elman of the Academic Engagement Network; and Dr. Ayal Feinberg, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights. On offer as giveaways were Douglas Murray’s recently published polemic On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization and Dina Powell McCormick and David McCormick’s co-authored book, titled Who Believed in You?: How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World.
“We wanted students to engage with ideas that touch on the entirety of the campus ecosystem and the subjects they may be asked to comment on,” Baime explained to The Algemeiner. “Oct. 7, the war, and its aftermath have changed the American pro-Israel movement forever.”
The obverse side of the conference’s educational objectives was wholesome fun for the 800 college aged conferees in attendance. They were treated to a buoyant concert in the Hilton’s Presidential Ballroom featuring the jazz-pop fusion act “All of the Above” and the rapper Duvbear, an 18-year-old who is emblematic of what Generation-Z calls “rizz.” Celebrities such as former NBA player Meta World Peace, former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho, and professional boxer George Foreman III afforded the students quick meet and greets and selfies. Capital Hilton staff carted out pounds of food – Latin, Asian, and Kosher – from its kitchens every several hours, fostering opportunities for socializing and being photographed on an ICC-themed “red carpet.”
University of California, Davis rising junior Toby Jacob told The Algemeiner that the nonprofit’s strength is its staff.
“The staff here is so knowledgeable and so capable,” Jacob said. “It can feel really scary when you’re dealing with these like large scale issues in your student government, with your administration – and to have people who have the resources to walk you through it is vital.”
Tessa Veksler, an NLS 2025 moderator who became the most recognizable pro-Israel activist of Generation-Z after being elected the first Shabbat-observant president of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s student government, agreed.
“When I was on campus going through the worst of the worst, I knew that ICC had my back and that I could count on the staff and the organization to be there at a moment’s notice,” Veksler said. “They exceptionally equip students with the tools to be able to lead themselves, and so there is an expectation that if you are an ICC fellow that you take the tools ICC gives and put in the work to go and become involved in student government and be the person to make the impact.”
She continued, “It’s a remarkable thing, and there’s a reason why I have stayed as involved as I am.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Devastated’: Wesley LePatner, Killed in Manhattan Mass Shooting, Was a Jewish Communal, Philanthropic Leader
A man holding a rifle walks into an office building at 345 Park Avenue shortly before a shooting that killed several people, in the Midtown Manhattan district of New York City, US, July 28, 2025, in a still image taken from surveillance video. Photo: Surveillance Camera/Handout via REUTERS
Wesley LePatner, an executive at Blackstone and a Jewish communal leader, was one of the victims of the mass shooting in Midtown Manhattan on Monday that killed four people and wounded a fifth in addition to the shooter, who died by suicide.
LePatner, 43, was an active member of the Jewish community and served on the UJA Federation of New York’s board of directors, which said it is “devastated by the tragic loss.”
“Wesley was extraordinary in every way — personally, professionally, and philanthropically,” the federation wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “An exceptional leader in the financial world, she brought thoughtfulness, vision, and compassion to everything she did. In 2023, we honored her with the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award at our Wall Street Dinner, recognizing her commitment to our community and her remarkable achievements, all the more notable as a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field.”
In her acceptance speech, LePatner said, “Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I would be up on this stage two decades later [after attending her first UJA Wall Street dinner]. UJA has many super-powers, but its most important in my view is its power to create a sense of community and belonging, and that ability to create a sense of community and belonging matters now more than ever.”
She also explained that “UJA stepped in early and fixed my feeling out of place by connecting me with senior Goldman Sachs women who were further along in their careers and personal lives, but equally committed to their Jewish community and identity.”
“I was an American,” she said, “but I was first and foremost Jewish.”
LePatner was also a supporter of Israel, leading a solidarity mission with UJA after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“In the wake of Oct. 7, Wesley led a solidarity mission with UJA to Israel, demonstrating her enduring commitment in Israel’s moment of heartache,” the UJA Federation of New York said in its statement. “She lived with courage and conviction, instilling in her two children a deep love for Judaism and the Jewish people.”
In addition to serving on the board of directors of the New York UJA, she was also on the board of trustees at The Abraham Joshua Heschel School — a pluralistic Jewish day school in New York. The Forward reported that school representatives wrote in an email that “there are no right words for this unfathomable moment of pain and loss.”
“It was a rare z’chut, a rare privilege, to know Wesley and to learn from her. She was a uniquely brilliant and modest leader and parent, filled with wisdom, empathy, vision, and appreciation,” they continued.
David Greenfield, CEO of the Met Council, posted on X that “Wesley was an amazing person who was also tremendously talented leader. She volunteered with her kids [at the Met Council] to feed those in need.”
LePatner graduated from Yale summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and met her husband on the first day of school in 1999.
She is survived by her husband and two children.