When They Spew Hate, It is Time to Educate: A Lesson From Professor W. Goodman

“cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, no coke, pepsi”

saturday night live, when it was funny

professor w goodman is ready to have you break a “mental sweat”

recently, people are angered over a saturday night live “bogus” news cast that has been viewed as anti-semitic.

per a news report, michael che, an snl comedian, during their weekend update newcast, joked[sic] “israel is reporting that they’ve vaccinated half of their population, and i’m gonna guess it’s the jewish half” insider.com

rather that get angry about this anti-semitic statement, professor w. goodman is here to educate. he will not dodge the facts.

first, jewish religious school students are taught about all of israel’s population. one population is the druze. the druze are not jews. they are non-muslim arabs who practice their own religion.

as noted in wikipedia, “the druze are arabic speaking citizens of israel and serve in the israel defense forces, just as most citizens do in israel. members of the community have attained top positions in israeli politics and public service. the number of druze parliament members usually exceeds their proportion in the israeli population, and they are integrated within several political parties.” thus, non-jewish israeli citizens have the opportunity for success within the nation.

prior to the ill fated weekend news update, there are two articles of import.

the christian science monitor article dated 1/15/21, entitled ” israel is a vaccination leader, but it labors to reach arab citizens” is an important read. the article documents a shipment of perishable covid-19 vaccine doses that were about to spoil. as a result, there was a call for citizens to go to get them before they went bad. the article noted that “some druze who arrived to be vaccinated were ushered to the front of what became a long line snaking down the main street. but they were far outnumbered by their jewish counterparts, a vivid illustration of a public health challenge facing the country. ” christian science monitor the article noted statistics that 75% of Jewish citizens over the age of 60 have already been vaccinated and the arabs were at 43%. the article discussed the efforts and challenges that israel faced in reaching out to the arab communities to make sure they got vaccinated.

also, prior to the ill fated weekend news update, another article from vox, “why israel is leading the world in vaccinating its population, dated 1/14/21, noted vaccination policy criticism. the article noted that “israel says that based on the terms of the oslo accords, the palestinian authority is responsible for health care in the Palestinian territories. according to the guardian, the palestinian authority had not asked for assistance early in the campaign.” vox the article noted that palestinian authority efforts to vaccinate their population which were “though the territories are set to receive doses through the covax, the who-linked international consortium, none have begun distribution yet. the palestinian authority also approved the russian vaccine, thought does have not yet arrived. “

now, take a break, wipe off the sweat off of your forehead and and let the professor break down this information.

we have actual facts, before the snl broadcast, which shows in instance where israel actually ushered non-jewish citizens to the front of the line to get their vaccinations before the jewish israeli citizens. we learn that the palestinian authority was responsible for vaccinating their own territories. we learn that the world health organization is in part to blame due to delays in getting vaccine doses to the territories. we also learn that the russians haven’t delivered the vaccines as well which were to go to the territories.

saturday night live: where are the jokes about the world health organization or russian concerning letting the palestinian territory residents down? how about a little “russia, russia, russai” joke? in the past, you loved to joke about putin with respect to his alleged close relation with him. what has changed? you can’t joke about putin now?

my wish would be that someone at nbc or snl would read this blog post and realize what they problem was with the joke. the sad part of it is that there are now snl defenders who are using it to justify animosity towards israel and decry those who are calling the joke anti-semitic.

in the future, perhaps professor w. goodman will encounter these snl staffers involved with this ill advise joke, and ask them the following, i would like a “cheeseburger” and hold the “cheese” and a pepsi.

be well!!

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