Bill Maher mocks Biden’s visit to Israel, saying the 80-year-old president is so old “he remembers the Dead Sea was ALIVE,” while comparing Harvard to a “Wuhan wet market” ignorance
HBO host Bill Maher couldn’t resist attacking President Joe Biden during his latest show, even as he praised the Democrat for his strong show of support for Israel in its war with Hamas.
“Joe Biden, our president, went to Israel this week – nothing to do with the war, he just wanted to get away from the tension in DC,” Maher joked in the opening monologue of Friday’s new episode Real time.
“But I think this was his best week as president, Joe Biden. This was his finest hour. And then he gets his ass on the plane, it can’t be easy. He is not a young man; he remembers the time when the Dead Sea was alive,” Maher said of the 80-year-old president.
Maher, who has supported Israel since Hamas launched its deadly surprise attack on October 7, also targeted elite US universities, where some student groups downplayed or even justified the massacre that left 1,400 dead.
“I recognize that a certain amount of foolishness is expected of students, but mixing Jägermeister and tomato juice is not the same as siding with terrorists,” Maher said. “If ignorance is a disease, Harvard Yard is the wet market of Wuhan.”
HBO host Bill Maher couldn’t resist attacking President Joe Biden on his latest show, even as he praised the Democrat for his strong show of support for Israel
Maher cited an open letter signed by 34 student groups at Harvard saying they “hold the Israeli regime fully responsible for all the violence that unfolds” after the Hamas attack, citing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the lead-up to the massacre.
‘They don’t really know much about anything. But that doesn’t stop them from having an opinion. They have convinced themselves that Israel is the most repressive regime in history because they have no knowledge of history or even a desire to know it,” Maher said.
Biden returned from Israel on Thursday and delivered a rare address to the nation from the Oval Office, asking Congress for more than $100 billion to support Ukraine and Israel in their respective wars with Russia and Hamas.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which entered its fifteenth day on Saturday, is the deadliest of five Gaza wars for both sides.
More than 1,400 people in Israel were killed, most of whom were civilians killed in the initial attack when Hamas militants stormed into Israel.
In addition, 203 people, including children, were reportedly captured by Hamas during the attack and taken to Gaza, the Israeli military said.
Hamas on Friday released two American hostages held in Gaza since the start of the war.
Natalie Shoshana Raanan, 17, and her mother Judith Tai Raanan, 59, arrived in Israel late Friday, the Israeli government confirmed, after leaving Gaza through an Egyptian-controlled border crossing.
President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are meeting this week in Tel Aviv, Israel during Biden’s emergency diplomatic mission
Biden rushed to Israel to show his support for the US ally before returning home to address the nation on Thursday evening
The Raanans left Gaza without any apparent physical injuries, got out of a car and were then surrounded by ICRC personnel wearing vests with the Red Cross on them. The pair then got into a Red Cross car and drove away.
They are now receiving medical treatment, the Illinois governor said, without providing details on their condition. The deal to free the pair was brokered by Qatar.
On Saturday, Israeli airstrikes continued to hit southern Gaza, an area full of civilians who fled there from the north on Israeli instructions.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said at least 4,132 people have been killed in Gaza and 84 in the occupied West Bank in the past two weeks.
About 14,000 people have been injured in Gaza and more than 1,400 in the West Bank, the group said.
Meanwhile, aid deliveries began arriving from Egypt to the Gaza Strip on Saturday.
A U.N. convoy of two trucks carried more than 44,000 bottles of drinking water from the U.N. children’s agency — a daily supply for 22,000 people, according to UNICEF.
The agency said it has supplies for up to 250,000 people at the Rafah crossing, which could be brought into Gaza within hours.