Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said he contacted the producer of “Saturday Night Live” – urging him to take action on the program’s “deeply offensive” joke about launching the COVID vaccination -19 in Israel.
“Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update is known for strong criticism and declines from the public, but Saturday’s deeply offensive joke about Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination process not only missed the mark, but crossed the line,” Greenblatt said in a statement on Monday.
Greenblatt said the program based “the joke’s premise on factual inaccuracies” and acted “on an anti-Semitic trope in the process”.
“I know that they can do better. In that spirit, I contacted Lorne Michaels over the weekend asking Saturday Night Live to take steps both to repair the damage that has been done and to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, ”said Greenblatt.
The show, along with its star Michael Che – a Weekend Update correspondent – has been under pressure since Saturday’s episode.
“Israel is reporting that it vaccinated half of its population. I suppose it is the Jewish half, ”said Che during the segment.
Many critics have called the joke anti-Semitic.
The vast majority of Israel’s population – 74 percent – is Jewish, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.
Vaccination rates for Israeli Arabs are much lower than for Jews in the country, partly due to the government’s distrust of the Arab community, according to a January article in The Christian Science Monitor.