‘SNL’: Michael Che ‘Weekend Update’ Joke on Israel Blasted as Anti-Semitic

Saturday Night Live is under fire this weekend for a joke about Israel’s coronavirus vaccination program. During the “Weekend Update” segment on Feb. 20, co-host and head writer Michael Che joked about the Israeli government’s claim that it has vaccinated 50-percent of its population. Some viewers called it anti-Semitic when he said: “and I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half.”

Che’s joke ended there, apart from a bemused camera take by co-host Colin Jost. However, the one-sentence quip led to thousands of words’ worth of discourse on social media, where many believed Che was being anti-Semitic. For some, criticizing the Israeli government at all is practically anti-Semitic, though others took a more nuanced view of the issue.

For those that do not typically follow international politics, Che’s joke was confusing, so news stories about the issues plaguing Israel began circulating as well. Radio host and MSNBC columnist Dean Obeidallah directed many people to his article, which he believed summed up the facts of the situation with Israel’s vaccination program. He drew on sources at the United Nations, the World Health Organization and more to make sense of the data.

Human rights experts for the U.N. wrote that “the COVID-19 pandemic has been ravaging the West Bank and Gaza in recent months, and has fractured an already badly under-resourced Palestinian health care system.” The W.H.O. found that Palestinian territories are seeing a 1.1-percent mortality rate from the novel coronavirus — far higher than the 0.7-percent rate in Israel.

Obeidallah and other critics blamed this on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu has been accused of treating Palestinian territories as “the world’s largest open-air prison,” and many described his policies as a form of Apartheid. At the same time, many questioned Che’s short take on the subject, and whether he was speaking from a place of humanitarian concern or bigotry. Here is a look at the responses to his loaded joke.