Bill Maher used his HBO platform to unleash a fierce critique of Democrats, accusing them of failing to speak out against antisemitism as Israel marked its seventy-eighth Independence Day.

The “Real Time” host said his party’s leaders had not done enough to confront what he described as a dangerous trend of hate targeting Jewish people.

“There is a frothing anxiousness for the literal extermination of this one group [Jews] and, Democrats, where are you?” Maher declared during his monologue.

He argued that liberal figures would normally mobilize quickly if such rhetoric were directed toward any other minority group. “If any other minority group was being talked about this way, you’d break out the kente cloth and have ten benefit concerts,” he said.

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Maher blamed what he called “brainwashed-by-TikTok constituents” for shaping the Democrats’ silence, charging that party leaders were letting misinformation dictate their stance rather than correcting false narratives about Israel.

“You don’t tell your woke idiots that Israel isn’t a colonizer or an apartheid state or committing genocide,” he continued, warning that critics might change their opinions if they spent time elsewhere in the Middle East.

The comedian and political commentator also sent a message directly to his detractors. “Let me just say this to all who ask me, ‘Why are you harder on the Democrats than you used to be,’” Maher said. “Until you fix this whole issue, stop asking me.”

He extended his criticism beyond Democrats, saying that divisive rhetoric about Israel had infected both liberal and conservative spaces. “People say the left and the right can’t agree on anything these days. Well, there is this one thing they agree on,” Maher said.

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During the same segment, he called out media personalities and politicians across the spectrum for comments that he said help fuel hostility toward Jewish people.

Maher reminded viewers of Israel’s founding purpose as a refuge from centuries of persecution. “Israel was founded on the idea that antisemitism made a Jewish state [necessary] because Jews would never be safe without one,” he said. “Can you honestly listen to this rhetoric and not see why that turned out to be true?”

He questioned whether either political flank still supported Israel at all. “If you don’t have the right-wingers on your side and you don’t have the progressives, what do you have?” Maher asked.

The host compared some of the antisemitic commentary circulating online to propaganda once used by Nazi figures, saying, “These are the kind of statements Goebbels would have read and said, ‘No notes.’”

Maher also mentioned that bigotry toward Muslims exists but stressed he saw a pronounced difference in tone, claiming Islamophobia had not reached the same level of tolerance seen for antisemitic speech.

He highlighted that shift by showing headlines like one from The New York Times which described “fear and vigilance” as “constant companions for Jews.”

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Later in the program, Maher referenced a separate controversy involving the Israeli government, which announced plans to sue The New York Times over columnist Nicholas Kristof’s article titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.”

That piece included disturbing allegations of “brutal sexual abuse” committed by Israeli prison staff and others, including a claim that dogs were trained to assault Palestinians.

Critics labeled the reporting “propaganda” and challenged its validity.

By the end of the segment, Maher had linked his argument back to what he saw as the larger failure of modern political discourse, charging that leaders from both sides lacked courage to condemn dangerous language wherever it appeared.

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