“Saturday Night Live” and star Michael Che are under fire from critics for falsely claiming Israel vaccinated half its population by only vaccinating Jews.
“Israel is reporting that they’ve vaccinated half of their population. I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half,” the Weekend Update correspondent cracked Sunday morning.
The vast majority of Israel’s population — 74 percent — is Jewish, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.
Vaccination rates of Israeli Arabs are much lower than Jews in the country, partially due to distrust of the government in the Arab community, according to a January article in The Christian Science Monitor.
By Sunday afternoon, the topic was trending, with many accusing Che and NBC of bias.
Disgusting from SNL. 25% of Israel’s population is different religion than Jewish. This statement feeds to the anti Semitic tropes that Jews believe they are better which is not the case and if they actually researched the situation they would see that. pic.twitter.com/Y7NJU1qMXt
— Aaron Pearlstein (@pearlsteinaaron) February 21, 2021
“Unsurprising coming from SNL as they have a long record of antisemitism,” posted former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind.
Unsurprising coming from SNL as they have a long record of antisemitism
But Michael Che or whoever wrote that “joke” is obviously also ignorant of fact that Israel has Arab citizens who’ve received the vaccine according to the same qualifications as Jews!@nbcsnl is the joke! https://t.co/Ou30zOh2AR
— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) February 21, 2021
“But Michael Che or whoever wrote that ‘joke’ is obviously also ignorant of fact that Israel has Arab citizens who’ve received the vaccine according to the same qualifications as Jews!,” the Brooklyn Democrat said.
Another critic tweeted: “43% of Israel’s Arab citizens have been vaccinated – and that already large # would be even higher if the kind of hateful propaganda spread by Michael Che weren’t around.”
