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John Oliver is just another comedian who thinks he is an expert on politics and so started his own political talk show. But like many of the others, he is incapable of just acknowledging when there is an issue which he knows little about. On the latest episode of his program Oliver showed that this was the case when it comes to Israel.
In a factually flawed – to say the least – and very hostile rant, which lasted for more than ten minutes, to open his Sunday night program “Last Week Tonight,” Oliver took it upon himself to blame Israel for all of the violence which has transpired in the last week. The man who has no journalistic credentials, no background in history, politics or foreign policy, and who cherry picks the news reports which he in turn uses to defend his weekly rants on the issues, has spoken: It is of course all Israel’s fault no matter what the facts may actually be.
HBO seems to be so embarrassed by Oliver’s ravings that it has removed the entire opening segment from his last show as it appears on its YouTube channel.
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At one point Oliver had the Chutzpah to say these words: “One side has suffered over 10 times the casualties, something which speaks to both the severe power imbalance at play here and how that often gets obscured by how we choose to talk about it.”
Where to begin? This is not a zero sum game. Even Hamas will admit that a large number of the casualties in Gaza are its own terrorists. The casualty figures cited every time there is a conflict in Gaza cite local health authorities as the source. These “authorities” are run by Hamas. And Israeli authorities have reported that a large percentage of Hamas missiles misfired or blew up on the ground, hitting buildings within Gaza. So who knows how many people there have been harmed by Hamas’ own weapons?
Here is some more of Oliver’s rantings:
“But we have got to start having this conversation honestly, and falling back on convenient, sanitized terms like ‘real estate dispute’ and ‘airstrikes on militants’ feels a little disingenuous when what you’re describing is forcing people from the homes they’ve lived in for decades and killing civilians and children. And again, none of this frees Hamas from responsibility, but Hamas doesn’t represent all Palestinians, just as what Israel is doing right now doesn’t represent all Israelis or indeed, Jewish people.”
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“Lots is complicated here. But some things are pretty simple. One side is suffering much more. And if America really wants to help, it might want to seriously consider changing its long-held position here, because for decades, the backbone of America’s policy in the Middle East is that America is an unwavering friend to Israel. Which is a great thing to try and be, but at the end of the day, I would hope that a real friend would tell me when I’m being an asshole, and definitely when I’m committing a fucking war crime.”
John Oliver seems to think that Israel is more culpable here because it can defend itself with the Iron Dome anti-missile system. He even condemned an Israeli general for saying that Hamas has its own version of the Iron Dome which is to simply stop firing missiles at Israel. Because, of course, how dare anyone imply in any way that these attacks are not justified, or that they are the cause of Israel’s reprisals.
No one should be surprised by the level of Oliver’s self-importance, self-righteous indignation, nor the level of his unveiled disdain for Israel. John Oliver did, after all, get his start as a protégé of Jon Stewart’s working under that comic for many years on “The Daily Show.” His This Week is just a weekly knock off of Stewart’s old show.
Oliver joined Stewart as a comedian who thinks he is a political pundit and who just spits out one sided rants on a regular basis. At least Jon Stewart used to have guests on his show for interviews. And these guests were frequently people who disagreed with him on the issues, but he granted a forum to give the other side’s view of things.
And as for Israel, Jon Stewart was always able to hide behind the fact that he happened to be born Jewish as somehow giving him a right to criticize the country, no matter how wrong or ignorant he always seemed to be about the conflict. What is John Oliver’s excuse?
Oliver is just an Englishman who abandoned his homeland to make more money in Hollywood, but after failing as a comic had to start a weekly political show. For some reason people like him think that as long as they tell a few jokes here and there then they can just say that theirs is really just a comedy program. But in the case of “Last Week Tonight” it is kind of hard to find the laughs, if they exist at all.
