Bill Maher shuts down Roseanne star Sandra Bernhard after the Jewish actress accused conservatives of spreading antisemitism

Bill Maher shut down fellow comedian Sandra Bernhard on his podcast after she claimed conservatives were the main cause of the alarming rise of antisemitism in America. 

The Roseanne star, who is Jewish, was speaking to Maher - an atheist whose mother was Jewish - on an episode of his Club Random podcast.

She argued that despite protests among left-wing, anti-Israel activists on college campuses and in various major cities, she doesn't feel afraid. 

'I like being Jewish. I go to Shabbat, I do my thing. But everybody's suddenly like, 'I'm Jewish, and I'm being [persecuted].' I don't feel persecuted,' she said. 

Maher responded by saying: 'There is an antisemitism afoot in this country which we haven't had in a very long time.'

When Bernhard tried to say that it came from the extreme right, Maher immediately cut her off. 

'No, it doesn't,' Maher said. 'The right-wing has the 'Jews will not replace us' nonsense. The left-wing is even worse.'

When Bernhard asked Maher to explain, he blamed liberals' obsession with identity politics for spreading anti-Jewish sentiment.

'That is coming down from elite colleges who see everything only through a racial lens. They are stupid. They don't know history. They think everything is about colonizers and racists, and how awful America is,' he said.

Maher said that while America 'has done some bad things,' the left is using Israel as a stand-in for 'every bad thing white people ever did.'

'This is not any more complicated to most of these college kids than the Palestinians are brown and poor and the Israelis are rich and white,' he said. 

Bernhard then tried to pivot to criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

'But can we get on the same page and agree that Benjamin Netanyahu is a s*** disturber and needs to be yanked out of Israel? He is not good for Israel. He is not good for Jews,' she said. 

'He has also contributed to the global mistrust – it shouldn't be Jews, it's Israelis. He is solidly to blame for everything that's happening right now.'

Maher, who has had Prime Minister Netanyahu on his show as a guest, again pushed back. 

'He is so not to blame for everything that's happening. That's the fault of the Palestinian people and the religion of Islam, which gets lost in all of this,' he said.

When Bernhard asked him to clarify, he said that Hamas is 'mostly to blame.' 

'Right now is happening because for years Hamas took aid money and instead of buying food with it and building buildings and hospitals, they bought bombs and made tunnels,' he added. 

Bernhard then suggested that Netanyahu had spent years supporting Hamas himself. 

'Correct. Yes, you're right. For strategic reasons, which probably were, in retrospect, not wrong. But it wasn't like Netanyahu was working against the interests – in his mind – of his own people,' Maher said. 

'He is working in the interest of only one person, himself, because he doesn't want to go to prison,' she said, which Maher completely disagreed with, though he did say Netanyahu will likely soon leave office. 

Maher, a darling of the liberal media, has frequently been critical of the left's anti-Israel sentiment in the wake of the Hamas attacks on October 7.

He has accused protesters of being 'American-hating hysterics devoid of knowledge' who support Hamas.

'It's hard to get your head around the thought of people yelling 'Death to America' on American soil,' he said.

'If they had any knowledge about the Middle East or what apartheid really means or genocide, would they be on the side of Hamas, really?'