The Anti-Defamation League fired off a statement on what it called a “deeply offensive joke” about Israel’s vaccination process that aired on Saturday Night Live this past weekend.
In a lengthy response posted on its Twitter account on Monday night, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said the “Weekend Update” joke by co-anchor Michael Che “not only missed the mark, but crossed the line — basing the premise of the joke on factual inaccuracies and playing into an anti-Semitic trope in the process.”
Greenblatt went on to claim his group had “tracked multiple Weekend Update jokes this season that inappropriately use Jews as the punchline” but did not specify any other jokes that allegedly trafficked in anti-Semitism. The ADL CEO also called on executive producer Lorne Michaels to “take action to repair the damage that’s been done and ensure that this does not happen again.”
Che’s joke employed a typical ‘Weekend Update’ setup of stating a fact from the news and riffing a punchline off of
In this case, the SNL co-anchor noted: “Israel is reporting that they’ve vaccinated half their population…”
“And I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half!” Che joked.
Israel has led the world in per-capita vaccinating of its population, but come under international criticism from human rights groups for apparent inequities in its inoculation process. Last week, an article in the Jewish magazine The Forward noted stark differences in the vaccination rates between Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens.
While the country has garnered international headlines for its speed and success in getting its 9 million people inoculated, Arab-Israelis have lagged behind. On Tuesday, the health ministry reported that 23% of Arab-Israelis had received at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, compared to 33% of Haredi Jews and 49% of other Jewish Israelis.
Watch the video above, via NBC.