Canceling Ramy Youssef on SNL won’t help Israel
Ramy (Ramy Youssef) and Yuval (Julian Sergi) traveled to Israel together for a business opportunity in season three of “Ramy.” (Courtesy of Jon Pack/Hulu)
Senior Columnist Rob Eshman March 15, 2024
Do the people who launched a letter writing campaign against Ramy Youssef’s upcoming appearance as host of “Saturday Night Live” really want to establish, in the words of another late night show, a “New Rule?”
If the protesters have their way and NBC cancels Youssef, the new rule will be, “Only comedians whose opinions we like can appear on TV.”
That’s an absurd standard, primed to backfire against the very people who promote it. The idea that American Jews are somehow safer, and Israel is stronger, by suppressing legitimate critical points of view is what needs canceling.
The accusations against Youssef, who co-starred in the 2023 movie Poor Things, center around his red carpet interview at the Academy Awards last week. Youssef wore a red Artists4Ceasefire pin and called for “an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza,” while expressing his desire for “lasting justice and peace for the people of Palestine.” His message, he said, was, “Let’s stop killing kids.”
For this, a group of activists want to shut him up.
Immediately after NBC announced that Youssef, the Egyptian-American creator and star of the Hulu show “Ramy,” would host SNL on March 30, activists launched a letter-writing campaign urging the like-minded to petition SNL to pick someone else.
“I kindly request that you reconsider your decision to provide Youssef with a platform on Saturday Night Live,” read the ready-to-send form e-mail. “His divisive remarks and lack of acknowledgment for the full scope of the situation raise doubts about the trustworthiness of his future statements.”
“Hey @nbcsnl,” wrote X user Howard Woloff, “There is time to do the right thing and remove Ramy Youssef as an upcoming host. His role in distributing these pins for Oscar night is unforgivable and he should not be given this national platform #stopantisemitism.”
NBC hasn’t issued a response, and it’s not clear that the campaign has gained much traction beyond the very low bar of social media posts.
But the idea that American Jews and Israel would be protected from the very real antisemitism that exists by censoring a Muslim American comedian is laughable.
Youssef in particular is hardly the kind of closed-minded ideologue that should inspire fear. His standup and his show traffic in nuance and gray zones. On “Ramy,” which is based on his experiences as a Muslim growing up in New Jersey, victims of racism can be racist. A God-fearing Muslim can hit the bars.
“I just want people to see Muslims as human. That’s it,” Youssef said in a 2019 NPR interview. “I just want to complicate the conversation.”
How complicated? In the series’ third season, Ramy travels to Israel with his Orthodox business partner. A show that could have gone for knee jerk characterization and easy anti-Israel points struck a deeply human chord.
Consider just two scenes: As soon as Ramy arrives in Israel from New Jersey with his Palestinian uncle Naseem, Israeli authorities whisk Naseem into detention — while Ramy loses himself exploring Tinder’s Israeli offerings. Later, when officials threaten to send Naseem home, the uncle answers, “I am home.”
Anyone who can juxtapose millennial horniness with geopolitical homelessness is someone we need to hear from more, not less.
“I hope it’s a positive contribution,” Youssef told JTA about the Arab-Israeli and Muslim-Jewish storylines on his show. “I hope that it points more to what we have in common than not.”
(That sensibility, by the way, infuses the subsequent series that Youssef produced,“Mo,” whose season finale, set in a Texas olive farm, presented a perfectly complicated take on the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)
But beyond the not-so-serious threat to Youssef’s SNL appearance, the instant calls to cancel reveals the shortsighted insecurity of some pro-Israel advocates.
Israel and the American Jewish community face real threats. Criticism in the public square from thoughtful people is not near the top of the list. If you want to live in a country where only certain opinions can be aired, just wait until your opinion is one of the unpopular ones.
You may be outraged at what Youssef says, or doesn’t say a couple of Saturdays from now. Many Arabs were outraged when SNL broadcast a joke about Gaza during its “Weekend Update” segment. Yet there’s no lack of platforms to express your outrage and get your own point of view across. It’s not a level playing field — he’s on TV, you’re not — but hearing things you don’t like is a small price to pay for the freedom to say things others don’t want to hear.
The letter-writing campaign, in fact, is yet more evidence that cancel culture thrives on both sides of the Left/Right divide — it may be the one thing they have in common.
On Thursday, Elon Musk sat down for an interview with former CNN anchor Don Lemon, whom Musk had just made a deal with to host a talk show on his X platform. Lemon asked Musk if he will moderate extremist content on the platform, such as accounts that promote the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory.
Musk could have said he will ban extremist accounts, or demand they not be anonymous, or add context and community notes to their post.
Instead he said, “I don’t have to answer your questions.” Then he fired Lemon.
One day we might all live in Musk’s world, a world where the tastes of dictators and billionaires define the limits of free speech and comedians are seen as a threat. But we’re not there yet — and let’s not hurry it along.
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