Bill Maher used his closing monologue on Friday’s episode of HBO’s “Real Time” to accuse prominent Democrats of knowingly repeating a false claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, calling it “the party’s worst moment since they undid Reconstruction after the Civil War.”
“Gaza equals genocide is a lie, an easily provable lie, and the fact that so many prominent Democrats go along with it is, to me, the party’s worst moment since they undid Reconstruction after the Civil War,” Maher said. “Democrats are policing their candidates really hard on this issue.”
Maher compared the pattern to a familiar demand on the right. “With Republicans there’s something you have to say, even though you know it’s bullsh*t, you have to say Trump won in 2020. This is the Democrats’ version of that,” he said.
Maher framed the debate as a continuation of arguments that followed the September 11 attacks. “After 9/11, there was a big debate, was this a clash of civilizations? It was, and it still is, not between Muslims and Christians — no reasonable person was saying that — but radical Islamism versus Western liberalism? Yes. That’s a real thing,” he said. “Fighting people who hate freedom of religion and hate homosexuals and hate the idea of women as equal and free humans, how did liberals wind up on their side? And many did.”
He said a shift in attitude among younger Americans has made that possible. “[T]he prevailing view of so many young people is that, well, come on, we’re the worst country ever, so if someone attacks us, they can’t be all bad. That certainly wasn’t the attitude 25 years ago,” Maher said, adding that he knows “a guy whose show got canceled just for saying the terrorists weren’t cowards. And that guy was right, they weren’t cowards.”
Turning to who he considers actually cowardly, Maher said: “Democratic Party politicians, and I’ll tell you why: Because nowhere has this moral confusion become more obvious than in a place called Gaza, a little strip of land that was not part of the original Israel, but which they won in a war launched against them, but then gave back as a peace gesture.”
Maher tied the false genocide claim directly to rising antisemitism. “If you’re one of the many people these days asking, this explosion of antisemitism around the world that we see, where is it coming from? This. This is where it’s coming from,” he said. “Because if you really think someone is committing genocide, of course, you have full permission to hate them, and history shows, for whatever reason, when it comes to hating the Jews, people don’t need a lot of permission.”
