Jon Stewart Reveals What His Jewish Upbringing Teaches Him About Israel's War On Gaza

“I feel like I’m watching something that is so self-evidently inhumane and horrific and to be told that I have to shut up because I risk the Jewish state by speaking out? I would say the opposite,” said Stewart in an interview with Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart.

“I think they’re putting the likelihood of a surviving Jewish state much more at risk with this type of action. I think they’re the ones being [antisemitic] … [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, with the definition of antisemitism, would probably have to bomb himself.”

Stewart, whose family is Ashkenazi Jewish, said he learned from Judaism that Jewish people are the “underdog” and said he’s “always looked at the chosen people as kind of awry.”

Stewart stressed that he knows what he’s seeing in Gaza, where experts have flagged a “worst-case scenario of famine” occurring despite Israeli leaders like Netanyahu claiming that “no starvation” is taking place there.

“And I have a moral clarity about what I’m seeing,” Stewart told Beinart, who was on the “Daily Show” to promote his new book “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.”

“And what I’m seeing, I think — as someone who was raised in Judaism — that’s what taught me that this is wrong. What I’m seeing happening in Gaza is wrong,” Stewart said.

Stewart’s interview with Beinart arrived on the same day that two major Israeli human rights groups concluded in separate reports that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Earlier in the segment, Stewart — who has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a number of times on his show — took aim at those who “yell” at him and call him a “bad Jew” over his comments on the war.

“Apparently you can lose points,” Stewart quipped.

Check out Stewart’s interview with Beinart on “The Daily Show.”