Jerry Seinfeld likened the Free Palestine movement to the Ku Klux Klan — even saying those who use the phrase “Free Palestine” are worse than the white supremacist group — at a student event at Duke University meant to honor hostages who are being held in Gaza.
Seinfeld spoke at the school in Durham, North Carolina, to introduce a former Israeli hostage, Omer Shem Tov, when he made the remarks, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Duke Chronicle. He reportedly started by saying, in reference to the Free Palestine activist movement, “Just say you don’t like Jews.”
“By saying ‘Free Palestine,’ you’re not admitting what you really think. So it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here, because they can come right out and say, ‘We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews.’ Okay, that’s honest,'" the Chronicle reported Seinfeld said.
Unpopular opinion but the guy’s been out of “real life” for almost three decades now. His bubble is made up very heavily by the worldview of Jewish voices, specifically those from New York Money which is a thing, and it’s not that surprising his take is what it is.
That said, yeah he probably shouldn’t be talking publicly about it. Because that’s ridiculous. For “regular” Jewish Americans, this time about this topic is incredibly distressing. Sort of like if your whole extended family, town, state, and media voted trump and think everything’s difficult-but-good, when obviously it’s beyond horrible.