A segment on Bill Maher’s HBO show, Real Time, has recently gone viral on social media and features him making a range of arguments about how Israelis “look like us, in most ways, values wise”, while the culture in Gaza is painted as backwards. He also compares Hamas and the Israeli government, presenting Tel Aviv as a beacon of light in comparison to Hamas, which he depicts as being the equivalent of savages.

The original clip, from Bill Maher’s show, which has been consistently pro-Israeli over the years, actually aired over 7 months ago and has recently resurfaced in a major way online, drawing both agreement from some and the ire of others. Maher infamously gave a softball interview to Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in October of 2022 when he was out of office and went on a US media tour to promote his new book. Bill Maher jokingly asked Netanyahu “I have three questions for you: Are you massacring Palestinians, are you ethnic cleansing, and are you an apartheid state?“, to which he replied “no, no and no” after which applause broke out and Maher moved on to another softball question.

Although Bill Maher strikes a stance of protecting Israel to the hilt, while attempting to blame every Israeli problem on Benjamin Netanyahu, he tries to come off as an edgy truth teller. This act makes him a rather effective propagandist for the Israeli war machine and that is why it is important to point out his distortions, lies, and attempts to package a genocide as plausible. Despite his language clearly striking an orientalist, Islamophobic and racist tone, simply labelling him as such is both giving him an easy way out, allowing him to call his critics “woke” and fails to debunk his propaganda for those who aren’t aware of the reality of the Palestine-Israel conflict. So, let’s go through Maher’s list.