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Dave Chappelle isn’t the first to suggest that Jews run Hollywood. Here are the origins of the trope.
(JTA) – On “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, Dave Chappelle really wanted his audience to know there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood.
“I’ve been to Hollywood, this is just what I saw,” he said during his widely dissected monologue. “It’s a lot of Jews. Like, a lot.”
While suggesting that it might not be fair to say Jews run the industry, the comedian said that coming to that conclusion is “not a crazy thing to think.” Chappelle’s “SNL” episode drew a season-high 4.8 million viewers when it aired on NBC (eclipsing Jewish comedian Amy Schumer’s own hosting stint the week before), and his monologue had more than 8.1 million views on YouTube as of Wednesday.
The Anti-Defamation League was quick to denounce Chappelle’s act, calling it antisemitic. Other prominent Jews have followed suit.
“I was very disturbed to see him speaking, to millions of people, a lot of antisemitic tropes,” Pamela Nadell, a professor at American University who researches antisemitism, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
But Chappelle, who was himself riffing on recent antisemitism controversies involving Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, wasn’t exactly breaking new ground by insinuating that Jews run Hollywood. The trope has been a part of show business since its earliest days — when, in a literal sense, Jews did run Hollywood. Or the studios, anyway.
Nearly every major movie studio was founded in the early 20th century by a group of first-generation secular Jews who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. Carl Laemmle (Universal), Adolph Zukor (Paramount), William Fox (Fox), Louis B. Mayer (MGM), and Benjamin Warner (Warner) were all Jewish silver-screen pioneers, laying the groundwork for the size and scale of the industry to follow.
But the industry has diversified greatly in the century since, with studios largely swallowed up by corporate behemoths. And while individual Jews may be overrepresented in an industry that has long welcomed and rewarded them, the rhetorical danger, Nadell said, comes in conflating a large Jewish presence in an industry with ownership and control of that industry.
“Jews remain active in Hollywood in a variety of roles, but it would be impossible to say that they run Hollywood, that they own Hollywood,” she said.
“Whenever the Jews enter into any kind of position where they might have influence over people who are not Jewish, then all of a sudden it’s seen as some kind of conspiracy.”
Conspiracy theories dogged Jews in Hollywood from the industry’s beginning. Because so many Jews were in control in Hollywood in its early years, Joseph Breen, who for decades ran the industry’s Production Code office and tried to make movies palatable to Catholic morality groups, blamed “the Jews” for sneaking sex, violence and moral depravity into the movies.
But their rise to the top of the still-young motion picture industry wasn’t because they were a part of some secretive cabal; it’s because, historians say, Hollywood provided a low barrier to entry for enterprising businessmen, and was lacking the antisemitic guardrails of more established industries.
“There were no social barriers in a business as new and faintly disreputable as the movies were in the early years of [the 20th] century,” historian Neal Gabler writes in his landmark 1988 book “An Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood.”
In the book, Gabler notes that the movie business, which evolved out of other professions like vaudeville and the garment industry where Jews had already found a toehold, lacked “the impediments imposed by loftier professions and more firmly entrenched businesses to keep Jews and other undesirables out.”
As such, Jews (particularly recent immigrants) were able to thrive in show business in a way they couldn’t in most other industries. Once they were in, family ties or the general phenomenon of affinity groups often led to them elevating other Jews in the industry: For example, prolific Jewish producer David O. Selznick, whose credits include “Gone With The Wind,” “Rebecca” and a huge string of other hits in the 1930s and ’40s, spent many years at MGM, run by his father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer.
Areas like the film, garment and publishing industries were attractive to Jews, Nadell said, “because there were so many other sectors of the economy where they were barred from.”
But in exchange, Hollywood’s prominent Jews had to effectively extinguish their Jewishness.
Yearning to assimilate into American society, the Jews who ran these studios were beset on all sides by antisemitic invective — first from Christian groups like the Legion of Decency, then by anti-Communist groups, both of whom accused Hollywood’s Jews of conspiring to undermine American society with their loose morals.
As such, the Jewish studio heads largely refrained from making any movies about Jewish themes, or snuffing out antisemitic content even within their own films, or otherwise exerting their influence in any obviously Jewish way, even as many of the Golden Era of Hollywood’s most acclaimed writers and directors (Herman Mankiewicz, Ernst Lubitsch, George Cukor, Billy Wilder) were also Jewish. “Gentleman’s Agreement,” the landmark 1947 film about antisemitism, didn’t have any Jewish producers, directors or major stars (though some of its credited writers were Jewish).
Famously, Hollywood’s Jews also went out of their way to avoid offending Hitler during the Nazi era, continuing to do business with Germany and largely avoiding featuring Nazis as villains in the prewar years.
Director Steven Spielberg speaks at the Academy Awards in Hollywood, Feb. 9, 2020. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
With the demise of the studio system in the 1960s, Jewish creatives ranging from Mel Brooks to Steven Spielberg to Natalie Portman no longer had to hide their identity from audiences, but instead made it an essential part of their public personas. Earlier this week, in a New York Times interview, Spielberg acknowledged that Hollywood was a welcoming place for Jews when he arrived as a young filmmaker.
“Being Jewish in America is not the same as being Jewish in Hollywood,” he said while promoting “The Fabelmans,” a loose retelling of his own Jewish upbringing. “Being Jewish in Hollywood is like wanting to be in the popular circle and immediately being accepted as I have been in that circle, by a lot of diversity but also by a lot of people who in fact are Jewish.”
Still, such ethnic affinity has often been deemed conspiratorial. “Hollywood is run by Jews” and “owned by Jews,” Marlon Brando declared in a 1996 interview with Larry King, further claiming that Jewish studio executives prevented antisemitic stereotypes from being depicted on screen while allowing stereotypes of every other minority group “because that’s where you circle the wagons around.”
(Despite this outburst, which prompted intense backlash from Jewish groups, Brando was known for having close relationships with Jews and demonstrating a strong understanding of Jewish theology and culture throughout his life, and apparently spoke Yiddish quite well.)
This general air of suspicion around Jews in show business has continued into the modern day, as evidenced by Chappelle and West’s comments. In the tweets that precipitated the collapse of his businesses, West singled out Jewish producers and managers in the entertainment industry he had affiliations with, echoing how believers in antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control tend to fixate on Jews in leadership positions outside of the public eye.
Attorney Allen Grubman, left, and rocker John Mellencamp speak onstage during the 37th Annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in Los Angeles, Nov. 5, 2022. (Amy Sussman/WireImage)
Ignoring the many industry leaders who are not Jewish, such conspiracy theorists tend to focus on the successful managers and lawyers in Hollywood who are, including Jeremy Zimmer, Ari Emanuel, Allen Grubman — and Harvey Weinstein, whose decades of sexual abuse, scorched-earth targeting of his accusers and eventual downfall are the subject of the new movie “She Said.”
And in a similar fashion to Brando, Chappelle suggested that there is a double standard in talking about ethnic groups, with jokes about Jews being seen as taboo in a way that jokes about Black people and other groups are not: “If they’re Black, then it’s a gang. If they’re Italian, it’s a mob. If they’re Jewish, it’s a coincidence and you should never speak about it.”
At the same time as Jews in and out of the industry are fighting such perceptions, they are also pushing for greater visibility. The unveiling of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles last year almost entirely omitted Jews from Hollywood’s founding narrative, leading to backlash from Jews in the industry and, ultimately, the guarantee of a new permanent exhibition space focusing on Jews.
And there was one other way in which the Chappelle episode hearkened back to the age-old dynamics of the relationship between Jews and Hollywood: “Saturday Night Live” executive producer Lorne Michaels, who presumably allowed the monologue on the air, is Jewish.
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The post Dave Chappelle isn’t the first to suggest that Jews run Hollywood. Here are the origins of the trope. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Gunfight Outside Israeli Consulate in Istanbul Leaves One Attacker Dead
A drone view shows police officers and medics standing at the scene, after a gunfire was heard near the building housing the Israeli consulate, according to a witness, in Istanbul, Turkey, April 7, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mehmet Emin Caliskan
One attacker was killed and two others were wounded in an extended gun battle with police outside the tower building housing the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday.
Footage showed the backpack-wearing attackers firing with automatic rifles and handguns, and police officers returning fire and seeking cover, as they maneuvered among parked white police buses near a checkpoint. One body lay on the street.
Shots rang out for at least 10 minutes among the glass towers in Turkey’s main financial district, Reuters witnesses said. One person was seen covered in blood.
No Israeli staff were at the consulate, which occupies a floor in one of the towers, at the time of the attack, Turkish and Israeli authorities said.
Israeli diplomats had left Turkey shortly after the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza began in late 2023, a conflict that prompted large pro-Palestinian protests outside the consulate and across the country, and a deep chill in Turkish-Israeli diplomatic ties.
US ENVOY SAYS CONSULATE WAS TARGET
The three attackers had links to an organization that “exploits religion,” Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci said, without giving any name. Two of them were brothers, and they had traveled in a rented car from the city of Izmit, he added.
While Turkish authorities did not say what motivated the attackers, Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey, said on X that it was an attack on the Israeli consulate and he condemned it.
President Tayyip Erdogan said the “heinous terrorist attack” would not dent Turkey’s trust and security. Israel’s foreign ministry said it appreciated Turkish security forces’ “swift action in thwarting this attack.”
Two police officers were also lightly wounded, Istanbul Governor Davut Gul told reporters at the scene of the midday incident, which occurred next to a major motorway as thousands of nearby workers were breaking for lunch.
DIPLOMATIC CHILL AMID GAZA WAR
Turkey, a fierce critic of Israel’s military operations in Gaza as well as in Lebanon and Iran, had recalled its ambassador from Israel in November 2023, and diplomatic relations have been effectively frozen since then.
At the same time that year, Israeli diplomats left Turkey due to security concerns, including the protests. Since then, heavily armed police and armored vehicles have been stationed in a broad area surrounding the consulate.
Militant violence has mostly subsided in Turkey in recent years after a violent spate from 2015 to 2016 when Islamic, Kurdish, and leftist militants carried out attacks amid the spillover from the Syrian civil war.
The latest incident was late last year when three Turkish police officers and six Islamic State terrorists were killed in a gunfight in the town of Yalova in northwest Turkey, amid raids on militant cells believed to be planning Christmas and New Year attacks.
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Ivy League Schools Are Cutting Jewish Admissions, While Faculty Attack Israel and Jews
Graduating students rise in support of 13 students not able to graduate because of their participation in anti-Israel protests during the 373rd Commencement Exercises at Harvard University, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 23, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
In an escalation of its fight with Harvard, the Trump administration announced a lawsuit accusing the university of failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students, and threatening to cut off Federal grant money. The lawsuit alleges the university was deliberately indifferent to campus antisemitism, failed to discipline “campus agitators,” refused to enforce its own rules regarding demonstrations, and says the institution was in violation of Title VI.
The US Department of Education also announced two new investigations into Harvard focusing on racial discrimination and antisemitism. The lawsuit came as many universities have quietly adopted a strategy of waiting out the Trump administration.
The other notable development in March regarding campus antisemitism was the release of the report by the House Education and Workforce Committee. Among the more shocking revelations detail how Qatar Foundation officials dictated terms to Northwestern University regarding the institution’s response to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023.
Particularly disturbing details described Qatari efforts to prevent the university from censuring faculty member Khaled Al-Hroub, who had denied that Hamas members had committed rape. The report also emphasizes that faculty affiliated with Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine “played a significant role in legitimizing and amplifying antisemitism on college campuses.
Elsewhere, legal systems continue to protect pro-Hamas protestors who vandalize university property. In one recent example, a New York State judge ruled that Columbia University cannot discipline students who occupied and vandalized buildings in May 2024 on the grounds that there was no evidence the students “acted to endanger Hamilton Hall or University property within Hamilton.” The judge, an adjunct Columbia Law School faculty member, deemed expulsions and other sanctions “arbitrary and capricious.”
In another case, pro-Hamas protestors who occupied and vandalized a building at the University of Washington in 2024 were charged with misdemeanor trespassing by county prosecutors, who claimed there was insufficient evidence for felony charges. These protestors caused more than $1 million damage to the building. Most have returned to campus.
In Michigan, a Federal court ruled that a lawsuit by Palestinian students who accused the University of Michigan of targeting their “activism” could advance. The suit alleges that disciplinary procedures and its suspension of the leading pro-Hamas student group constituted viewpoint discrimination.
More positively, the University of California Regents voted to settle a suit which alleges the institution failed to respond to antisemitic harassment and discrimination. The suit focused on pro-Hamas protests in 2024 where Jewish students were assaulted and harassed. The agreement stipulates antisemitism training for staff, faculty and students, an annual survey of Jewish life on campus, and the creation of a Title VI office.
Pro-Palestinian students complained the settlement is “a tool to silence the lived experiences of Palestinians and to criminalize student organizing against the ongoing dispossession and oppression of Palestinians in their homeland.” Immediately after and in contravention of the settlement, law school dean Edwin Chemerinsky announced to students that there would be no changes to the speakers policy.
The demographic composition of universities has been recognized as one of the bases for intensified hostility towards Jews and Israelis. The international component of student bodies, reaching in excess of 50% at some institutions, has imported students relentlessly hostile towards Israel and Jews. Complementing this, however, have been efforts to deliberately reduce Jewish populations.
New research has now shown how Harvard, Yale, Penn, and Columbia have systematically reduced the percentages of Jewish students in the past decades. Harvard reduced its Jewish population from approximately 25% in 2004 to the current low of 7%. Analysis of Columbia suggests the number was reduced from approximately 19% in 2004 to 9% today. Dramatic reductions in the number of white students admitted are also apparent.
Most Ivy League and elite institutions showed similar drops, with Cornell holding steady and Brown increasing the number of Jewish students. Muslim enrollment particularly at Columbia increased in the same period from approximately 4% to 7%. In response, Harvard denied reports that it had increased recruitment at Jewish day schools.
The rapid replacement of Jewish and white students at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia appears part of deliberate efforts to expand institutional “diversity,” globalize the student body and thus the subsequent donor base, and to “deAmericanize” the faculty and curriculum.
The replacement correlates with a massive upswing in anti-American, anti-Israel, and antisemitic activity at these institutions. Downstream effects on American and global society may also be inferred as institutional cachets bolstered hateful stances from graduates.
Faculty Lead the Antisemitism Effort on Campus
Faculty continue to stand at the vanguard of anti-Israel and antisemitism on campus, a reality highlighted by details in the House Education and Workforce Committee report. In the wake of the Iran conflict Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups have also become outspoken in support of the Iranian regime and have decried the US.
The University of California Ethnic Studies Council and Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism stated, “We reject imperialist and fear mongering narratives that position Iran as the intruder in the region, rather than US military bases and US interventionism.”
Union Theological Seminary announced the creation of a “Religion and Public Life” program led by two former Harvard Theological Seminary faculty who had left that institution after the program had been scrutinized for its goal to “dezionize Jewish consciousness.” The appointment of Harvard faculty member Rosie Bsheer as Columbia’s “Edward Said Professorship in Modern Arab Studies and Literature” also installs a reliably anti-Israel if mediocre figure in a high profile position. Reports regarding Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies also depict a Jewish founded academic unit that has been thoroughly colonized by “anti-Zionist” faculty.
Elsewhere the Harvard François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health also held another “human rights” event in which participants accused Israel of “genocide.” The head of that center, Kari Nadeau, has now been named dean of public health at UCLA.
In an unusual case that suggests the methods used by Qatar supporters to police academia, Kings College London academic Andreas Krieg was forced to apologize and compensate two individuals in separate defamation cases. Krieg had falsely alleged one of the academics was a UAE agent operating in Sweden which generated official investigations. Krieg was formerly a contractor for the Qatari Ministry of Defense and has a long history of promoting explicitly Qatari viewpoints.
Students Embrace Iran
The most notable development in the student sphere in March were expressions of support for the Islamic Republic of Iran in response to the American-Israel campaign. This included mourning Ayatollah Khamenei by the Ahlul-Bayt Islamic Society at Kings College London, which called his death “an unimaginable loss.”
At the University of Washington, a pro-Hamas student group endorsed a message from the PFLP affiliated Tariq el-Tahrir Youth and Student Network praising “the raining of blessed missiles over US military bases” and calls for “DEATH TO AMERICA, DEATH TO ISRAEL, GLORY TO THE MARTYRS, LONG LIVE THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN, LONG LIVE THE AXIS OF RESISTANCE!”
The infamous pro-Hamas umbrella group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) also posted the message “Marg bar Amrika” or “death to America.” This forced the university to state the group was not “affiliated in any way with the University,” and that, “There is no evidence that anyone currently in control of their account is a current Columbia student, staff, or faculty member. They are illegally using the Columbia name.” Columbia was also forced to suspend the Young Democratic Socialists of America group for its continuing affiliation with CUAD.
Antisemitism in British education continues to intensify. The depth of hostility towards Jews on British campuses is depicted in a new report from the Union of Jewish Students, which details among other things that 20% of students would be reluctant or unwilling to have a Jewish housemate. Some 47% of students indicated they had been exposed to slogans or protests celebrating the Hamas massacres of October 7. The massacres were widely hailed by pro-Hamas student groups who celebrated the killing of Israeli civilians and soldiers. Jewish students are also routinely subjected to harassment and even violence on and off campuses
K-12 Teachers Support Iran and Oppose Israel
Teachers unions remain the focal point for anti-Israel and anti-American activism (and in the case of Philadelphia for training “revolutionary abolitionists”). They have now also taken the lead as supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In response to the attack on Iran the Chicago Teachers Union co-sponsored a “hands off Iran and Lebanon” rally along with Palestinian, communist and other groups.
The union also adopted a resolution calling for a May Day civic action that would shut down schools. The protest calls for “No Work, No School, and No Shopping” to “defend our Democracy, demand ICE out of our cities, and tax the rich to support our schools and vital services.”
Anti-Israel activity by teachers unions and state officials in Canada continues to follow the path of Britain toward antisemitism and boycotts of Israel. In one development the British Columbia Teachers Federation passed a motion endorsing the BDS movement. In another, Montreal school officials announced they would be investigating reports of Israeli soldiers speaking in Jewish schools as violations of public funding laws.
In a third case a Holocaust survivor’s talk at a Canadian private school’s symposium was canceled. The school pointed to safety and the “current volatile geopolitical climate and … the high-profile nature of the dignitaries scheduled to attend,” and said it was “reviewing the format of its annual Holocaust commemoration ceremony.” The move came as “anti-Palestinian racism” continues to be elevated as the single most important and untouchable form of discrimination and pedagogical pivot in Canadian schools.
Dr. Alex Joffe is an archaeologist and historian specializing in the Middle East and contemporary international affairs. A completely different version of this article was originally published by SPME.
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Ambulances Burned in London: How Many More Warnings Do We Need?
Charred remains of ambulances belonging to Hatzola, a Jewish community organization, which were set on fire in an incident that the police say is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, in northwest London, Britain, March 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
The world woke up last week to the news of yet another antisemitic attack in the UK, this time in the form of an arson attack, where three masked individuals set alight four Hatzola ambulances outside a synagogue in Golders Green, London.
The police were surprisingly quick to label this as an antisemitic attack. Tweets started flooding in from political leaders such as the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, declaring “This is a deeply shocking antisemitic arson attack,” and “Antisemitism has no place in our society.”
We need to ask ourselves a simple question: Is condemnation really enough to stop this?
On September 27, 2025 — a late Saturday night — I sat down at a pub in Manchester. Not even 60 seconds passed before my kippah caught a middle-aged woman’s attention. She leaned right over me, demanding answers: “Do you believe in genocide?” “Do you believe in free Palestine?”
Trying to de-escalate and enjoy my pint in peace, I respond, “Let’s keep politics away from the pub.”
She repeated herself in a more aggressive tone, and then picked up my pint, threw it in my face, and ran out straight into a taxi.
With just 12 hours until my flight, the police agreed to meet me the next morning to take a statement. I gave them a very clear message: If you don’t deal with the minor antisemitic attacks, there will be something way bigger, and it will be too late.
Five days later, just 0.5 miles from that pub, the Yom Kippur attack occurred — when an Islamist terrorist committed a heinous act of violence, leaving two Jews murdered in cold blood.
Following the shocking terror attack, I hoped the police would finally enforce a zero-tolerance policy on minor antisemitic attacks, especially the antisemitic assault that happened to me at the pub five days prior, as they had promised during the interview.
I stayed hopeful for four months, until the case was closed with no action taken. What does that tell us?
The Jewish community in the UK has reached a stage where they often don’t bother calling the police after antisemitic assaults or attacks, because receiving a crime reference number and a “we won’t tolerate antisemitism in our society” condemnation isn’t enough.
When British political leaders and police turn a blind eye to hundreds of antisemitic assaults in the UK, while thousands march and scream “globalize the intifada,” and Israelis are banned from attending a soccer game on British soil, does that reduce antisemitism — or risk encouraging it?
If the UK is serious about making Jews feel safe, they must end these marches calling to “globalize the intifada,” and crack down on every single minor antisemitic attack.
What starts small doesn’t stay small.
A group calling themselves the “Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand” has claimed responsibility for the arson attack on the Hatzola ambulances, and several other arson attacks targeting synagogues in Europe over the past month. This terrorist organization has ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), yet the UK still fails to formally proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organization. We must ask ourselves: What signal does that send to those willing to attack Jews?
The warning signs are there. They’ve been there.
At what point are they actually going to be taken seriously?
Chaim Frankenhuis is a UK-born commentator based in Israel, focusing on the rise of antisemitism, distorted media narratives, and developments surrounding Jewish heritage.