Bill Maher Blasts Left, Right: “Jew Hatred Isn’t Just Acceptable Now. It’s Cool.”

Bill Maher used his HBO monologue Friday night to deliver a sharp warning about antisemitism, arguing that hostility toward Israel has become a socially acceptable cover for open Jew-hatred.

The segment, titled “No Jews, No News,” aired on Real Time with Bill Maher as Israel marked 78 years since its founding. Maher, a longtime liberal commentator known for criticizing both Republicans and progressive activists, said the current rhetoric around Israel shows why the Jewish state was necessary in the first place.

“Israel was founded on the idea that antisemitism made a Jewish state necessary,” Maher said, adding that Jews understood they “would never be safe without one.”

“Can you honestly listen to this rhetoric and not see why that turned out to be true?” he asked.

Maher said Israel is treated as uniquely evil while far worse regimes and conflicts receive far less attention. “China, Russia, the Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, North Korea, all way worse,” he said. “And that’s how you know it’s antisemitism. It’s the inconsistency.”

He then turned to rhetoric on both the far right and progressive left, citing Tucker Carlson’s platforming of Nick Fuentes and Holocaust deniers, anti-Israel campus activists, media figures and cultural voices.

“People talk about Jews these days like something out of Stormfront,” Maher said. “Except it’s not Stormfront.”

Maher cited a comment from Columbia professor Hamid Dabashi, who wrote that Jews have “a vulgarity of character that is bone-deep and structural to the skeletal vertebrae of its culture.”

“These are the kinds of statements Goebbels would have read and said, ‘No notes,’” Maher responded.

He also pointed to rhetoric from anti-Israel activists and influencers who have called for Israel’s destruction or compared Zionists to Nazis. “Jew hatred isn’t just acceptable now,” Maher said. “It’s cool.”

Maher said the trend is not merely criticism of Israeli policy, but a growing public comfort with language aimed at Jews and Israelis as a group. “There is a frothing anxiousness for the literal extermination of this one group,” he said.

The HBO host also rejected the claim that Islamophobia and antisemitism are currently equivalent in scale or tone. “It’s not a contest,” he said. “I’m just saying these are the numbers, the facts, the reality.”

The sharpest portion of the monologue was aimed at Democrats. Maher accused party leaders of failing to confront anti-Israel rhetoric because younger progressive voters have turned against Israel.

“Democrats, where are you?” he asked. “If any other minority group was being talked about this way, you’d break out the kente cloth and have 10 benefit concerts.”

He said Democratic leaders should be correcting activists rather than indulging them. “You don’t tell your woke idiots Israel isn’t a colonizer or an apartheid state or committing genocide,” Maher said.

Maher closed by addressing those who ask why he has become harder on Democrats.

“Until you fix this whole issue,” he said, “stop asking me.”