Jon Stewart’s Daily Show Segment on Israel and Hamas from NINE YEARS Ago Gains Sudden Relevance

A sketch from The Daily Show saw a viral resurgence for depicting the difficulty of holding any policy conversation about Israel without getting lynched by political commentators.

The 2014 sketch features former Daily Show host Jon Stewart preparing to hold a conversation about Israel. The second Stewart mentions the name of Israel, Jordan Klepper, Jessica Williams, and the rest of his former correspondents instantly ganged up on Stewart and pummeled him with anti-semitism accusations.

When Stewart again mentioned Israel and was subjugated to another cacophony of abuse by the correspondents, he dove into his point that “Just merely mentioning Israel, or questioning in any way the effectiveness and humanity of Israel’s policies, is not the same thing as being pro-Hamas.” Of course, the mention of Hamas immediately caused Stewart to get bombarded with accusations of being a “Zionist pig” who supports the murder of Palestinians.

“Y’know what? F*ck it,” Stewart said as he crumpled his show notes while accepting defeat. Interestingly enough, the mob gave Stewart a pass to talk about Ukraine.

While the nine-year old sketch was clearly meant to parody the discourse about Israeli-Palestinian conflicts from the last decade, it holds a new relevance in light of Israel’s war against Hamas and the atrocities they’ve committed. The war has also caused a firestorm of political commentary as the public grapples with Hamas’ murders and kidnappings, plus the recurring historical quagmire between Israel, Palestine and the Gaza Strip.

It isn’t clear what prompted the sketch’s new online momentum, but it blew up on TikTok while surging across X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Loads of X users hailed the segment’s enduring relevance, not the least of whom was the platform’s owner, Elon Musk.