How Jon Stewart evolved on Israel — at least on ‘The Daily Show’
Stewart went from joking about taking a side to saying Israel’s ‘inhumane’ actions are untenable
Jon Stewart and Peter Beinart have a serious conversation on Monday, July 28’s episode of The Daily Show. Courtesy of Comedy Central
By PJ Grisar July 29, 2025
Jon Stewart self-identifies as a “bad Jew.” The sort who would start Passover with a meatball parm hero. One who isn’t up on the finer parts of the Talmud. And, to some in his audience of detractors, one who isn’t sufficiently supportive of the state of Israel.
“People yell at me about what I say sometimes about Palestine and what’s going on in Israel and they call me a ‘bad Jew,’” Stewart said on Monday’s episode of The Daily Show, speaking to Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart. “Apparently, you can lose points.”
Looking at the scorecard, Stewart has, to those who consider unyielding approval of Israel’s actions a prerequisite to good Jewish behavior, seen his numbers drop.
In just over a decade Stewart, like much of the Jewish left, moved from light critique to the point where, this week, following statements from Jewish leaders and the Reform movement over reports of starvation in Gaza, he all but said that Israel was committing genocide.
Did the comedian evolve on the issue — or did he merely become more comfortable expressing his views? What follows is a breakdown of Stewart’s remarks on the show, which may paint a broader picture of where much of American Jewry is now, nearly two years into Israel’s war in Gaza.
July 21, 2014 — Operation Protective Edge
About a year before Jon Stewart’s first departure from The Daily Show, following the murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Hamas-affiliated militants, Israel was conducting Operation Protective Edge, an aerial and ground offensive in Gaza that lasted over one month.
In the early days of fighting, Stewart devoted a couple of minutes in his monologue to the war, sardonically referring to the asymmetrical nature of the war by saying, “Both sides are engaging in aerial bombardment, but one side appears to be bomb-better at it.”
Stewart was slammed for being one-sided, prompting a response from the Times of Israel and a testy exchange with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, where he tried to find common ground over the need for aid to people in Gaza. Clinton responded by blaming Hamas, to which Stewart asked, “If you’re living in that situation, couldn’t you see yourself thinking, ‘These are our freedom fighters,’ even if they might be viewed differently?”
In a response to blowback from all sides, Stewart followed up with what he does best: humor.
When Stewart began remarks to address the war, a group of his correspondents pounced from under the desk to keep him quiet. It was a cacophonous screaming match in which Stewart was called both a “self-hating Jew” and a “Zionist pig.”
Alarmed and unable to get a word in edgewise, Stewart crumpled the paper with his planned talking points and said “f— it, let’s talk about something lighter like, uh, Ukraine?” (How history repeats itself.)
Feb. 26, 2024 — 5 months into the Israel-Hamas war
Stewart returned to his hosting duties in the lead-up to the 2024 election. Four months into the war in Gaza, he debuted a segment called “The Futile Crescent,” where he laid out three plans for peace. Two were jokes: Sending Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine and “Let’s ask God.”
The third was a proposal that Israel stop bombing, Hamas releases hostages and Arab countries form a demilitarized zone “between Israel and a free Palestinian state.” (The organization governing this agreement would be the “Middle East Treaty Organization” or “METO.”)
This Stewart was clinging to hope, and it was reflected in his choice of guests, Intercept reporter Mutraza Hussain, who is Muslim, and The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg, who is Jewish.
Stewart put these men forward as an example of how to disagree without being disagreeable, even saying he wanted them as his screensaver. But as the war dragged on, Stewart’s Pollyannaish outlook appeared to wither.
April 8, 2024 — 6 months into the war
On the day of the 2024 solar eclipse, Stewart veered away from a remote about the celestial phenomenon to issue a “wellness check” six months into the fighting in Gaza.
“As the war has grinded on, justice is beginning to seem more like cruelty,” Stewart said. “But not to worry, America, the shining city on the hill, is on the case, with our universal values.”
He then cut away to then-President Joe Biden describing a battle between a “rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”
The president was speaking about Russia, and Stewart went on to show a number of Biden administration officials displaying a double standard for Israel’s actions when it comes to weaponizing food (at the time it was reported there was a famine in Gaza), suppressing a free press (Israel outlawed Al Jazeera) and seizing land with force (Israel annexed 2,000 acres in the West Bank).
When Russia does it, the remarks seemed to say, it was worthy of the strongest condemnation. When it comes to Israel, the Biden administration says if the reports are true they are “concerning.”
“Why do we tiptoe around on eggshells?” Stewart asked. “They slap America in the face and our response is, ‘Well, if anyone slapped us in the face it’d be concerning, that’s for sure.’”
Stewart accused the American government of “verbal gymnastics” so as “not to offend the delicate sensibilities of a country we provide most of the weapons for.”
“Every time America tells the world there’s something we won’t allow, Israel seems to say ‘Challenge accepted,’” Stewart said. “Are they willfully trying to provoke us? Or perhaps they’re just reading our principles from right to left.” (He described this as “kind of a bar mitzvah joke.”)
Stewart cited Gaza Health Ministry numbers, which at that point listed 30,000 dead (13,000 of them children) and wondered why Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser John Kirby couldn’t muster a response stronger than “concern” for the loss of life.
On hearing the U.S. was cutting an $18 billion arms deal with Israel, Stewart responded: “I don’t know about you, but if that’s true, I find it concerning.”
He shared that concern again, in September 2024, as plans for a ceasefire stalled under Biden. And as Israel struck Iran under Trump in June. But the “Futile Crescent” desk segments, still packed with jokes, felt different than Stewart’s most recent conversation, which got to the core of how Stewart defined his own Jewish ethics.
Jul. 29, 2025 — 21 months into the war
Stewart was already bracing for blowback when he announced his guest, Peter Beinart, who recently published his book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.
“Start your angry emails now,” Stewart said.
But the moment seemed ripe for an Israel critic like Beinart, as many Jews have recently shown concern for reports of hunger in Gaza, perhaps shifting the Overton Window enough to allow for his argument that the narrative of “eternal victimhood” has blinded many Jews to the reality that they may be persecutors. (Beinart’s book came out in February; his appearance followed the Reform movement’s statement on starvation in Gaza and Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem’s conclusion that Israel was committing genocide.)
In another indication of an inflection point, the same evening Stewart hosted Beinart, Seth Meyers addressed the hunger crisis on Late Night, saying that while he hosts a comedy show, he and his staff are “also human beings and we are appalled by the unspeakable horrors currently unfolding in Gaza.”
Stewart began his discussion by stating that while he may not be as familiar with the history of the region as others, “I have a moral clarity about what I’m seeing, and what I’m seeing, I think, as someone who was raised in Judaism, that’s what taught me that this is wrong.”
Beinart explained to Stewart that the underdog story that many Jews, like Stewart, internalize is belied by Jewish texts, which show how Jews in their totality have been both victimized and victimizers throughout history. He argued that it is the responsibility of Jews to remember our past and not allow our persecution to be transferred to others.
Beinart took pains to say that Gaza wasn’t the equivalent of the Holocaust, but Stewart seemed to respond that it could be a “slow motion” one, taking issue with a recent New York Times column by Bret Stephens.
“I feel like I’m watching something that is so self-evidently inhumane, and horrific, and to be told that I have to shut up because I risk the Jewish state by speaking out,” Stewart said.
Stewart argued the contrary — Israel’s actions are endangering its own survival.
Stewart, who previously stressed the concept of “Never Again for Anyone” in an interview discussing the West Bank with Ta-Nehisi Coates last fall, agonized over how he could break through to other Jews who don’t share his views. In a statement that may have been unthinkable for a basic cable comedy show just a few months ago, Stewart questioned if the war could even be classified as one, arguing “it’s a guerrilla operation facing an actual army with planes and bombs.”
But as Stewart questioned the narrative he grew up with, of Israel as necessary for Jewish safety, he also appeared to admit his view on the conflict was not all that new.
Recalling the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, Stewart said he viewed what followed as an experiment of different approaches: what happened when Palestinians choose a radical group (Hamas) to govern them, while in the West Bank, the more moderate Palestinian Authority has control.
“What happened in the West Bank then was not the flourishing of rights; it was the building of more settlements, it was the empowering of settler violence, it was the crushing of the Palestinians’ authority to do anything,” Stewart said. “It felt like that was the moment where hope was removed in any real way, for me; that’s when I went, ‘Oh, I don’t believe any more.’”
The comedian may have been fatalistic for 20 years, but it was only the last few months that posed an opportunity to say how he really feels — perhaps because enough other people have changed their minds.
