Tiffany Haddish goes to Israel, visits Hostage Square and pledges to see Gaza
From left, Rabbi Susan Silverman, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback, Tiffany Haddish, Aliza Rose Silverman and Billy Crystal at Haddish’s 2019 bat mitzvah celebration in Beverly Hills, California. Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Netflix
By Beth Harpaz February 22, 2024
Comedian Tiffany Haddish is on a trip to Israel because, she says, “I wanted to talk to the people, I wanted to be with the people, I wanted to see with my own eyes.”
Haddish made the comments in an interview with TMZ after flying to Israel earlier this week.
In a video she made during her flight, she said she was “going to the Holy Land. I suggest you all do it.” In a happy, singsong voice, she added: “On my way to Tel Aviv, then to Jerusalem, then I’m going to the Dead Sea. Going to have some fun. It’s going to be great. Then I’m going to learn about the politics. Who said I wasn’t going to Gaza? I said I’m going to go see with my own eyes.”
She also said she “might come back with a Jewish baby!” and later joked, “Gonna find me a man!”
Learning that ‘a lot of people were kidnapped’
On the call with TMZ, Haddish said she made the trip because “I can’t believe everything I read. I need to go see for myself.”
She said she planned to meet with families of hostages and that she hadn’t previously known that not only were people killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, but “a lot of people were kidnapped.”
She added: “I didn’t know that before.”
A video of Haddish in a Tel Aviv taxi shows her asking, “Why do they call it Hostage Square?” The tour guides accompanying her explained that’s where families of the hostages gather, across from Israeli army headquarters, to “pressure” the military to bring the hostages home.
Haddish responded with what she imagined the families to be saying: “Go get my babies! Go get my damn baby!”
When TMZ asked if she was planning to learn about Israel’s war in Gaza, in which thousands of Palestinians have died, she said: “Yes, I’m going over there, too,” adding, “I care about both sides. I care about humanity, human beings.”
She said making the trip by herself “takes a lot of courage,” and that she felt she was doing “something that’s kind of scary.”
When the TMZ interviewer asked her to share video of her experiences there, she said she’d need to send an invoice for that. “I need a new diamond Star of David,” she joked.
A bat mitzvah and her Jewish heritage
Haddish was welcomed by a tweet from Israel’s official account on X saying that the “one and only @TiffanyHaddish is on her way to Israel. Tiffany, can we PLEASE throw you a Bat Mitzvah at the Western Wall?”
Actually, Haddish had a bat mitzvah in Beverly Hills in 2019, officiated by Rabbi Susan Silverman, sister of the comedian Sarah Silverman. Haddish’s father was an Eritrean Jew, and she’s said she confirmed her Jewish heritage through DNA testing.
Before Haddish’s breakout role in the 2017 comedy film Girls Trip, the Emmy- and Grammy-winning star supported herself as an entertainer working hundreds of b’nai mitzvah in Los Angeles.
In the video she made in flight, Haddish shows herself swirling a beverage in a cup, which she notes is orange juice, “not a mimosa.” She’s been arrested several times for driving under the influence and was also accused of child sex abuse in a lawsuit over a comedy sketch about pedophilia. That lawsuit was eventually dropped and Haddish said she “deeply” regretted the skit.
Pickles, ‘in order to survive’
Another video, posted on TikTok Wednesday, shows Haddish eating pickles with the Israeli actress and activist Noa Tishby. “I’m here behind the scenes with Tiffany Haddish,” Tishby said. “I was shocked because what did Tiffany ask to have backstage? Kosher pickles!”
Tishby said pickles became a “very Jewish food” because when Jews didn’t have money for fresh food, they started “preserving everything.”
Haddish giddily picked the theme up, saying, “In order to survive, you know, you must pickle the cucumber! The Jewish people, they are a pickled people, and they will last forever, forever and ever!”
“We’re both 150 years old,” Tishby joked, to which Haddish responded, “Girl, please, I’m 300!” They then toasted with their pickles, saying “L’chaim.”
SpongeBob meme made her laugh
On Wednesday, Haddish reposted a fan’s graphic of the SpongeBob character Squidward, shown sleeping peacefully next to the words: “Bella Hadid travels to a theocratic authoritarian regime,” a reference to the model’s trip to the United Arab Emirates. Squidward is then shown wide-eyed and red-faced at the news that Haddish had traveled “to the only democracy in the Middle East.”
“I don’t know why,” Haddish commented on the post, “but I laughed hard when I saw this.”
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