Bill Maher drops “Open Letter to Chappell Roan” about Israel

The anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel was on Bill Maher’s mind during Friday night’s “Real Time.” The late-night host, known as much for his smug take on world affairs as his wit, delivered an “open letter” from New Rule to singer Chappell Roan, claiming he wanted to educate the singer about the Middle East – but he doesn’t do that. It doesn’t look like he’ll be joining Roan at the Pink Pony Club any time soon.

Maher praised Roan as “a great new recording artist” – but he didn’t hesitate to make the tone of his “open letter” clear when he added: “Which, like a Hezbollah pager, is blowing up.” As of September 17th Thousands of these devices exploded in Lebanon, killing two children and four health care workers.

He noted that he and Roan agree on some things, but their opinions on Israel differ. “This is where we need to test your promise to think critically and question whether what you read on social media is true, because it is not,” Maher said. “There’s a whole history of the Middle East that you and your fans don’t hear about.”

Maher said he “didn’t learn anything about the Middle East from TikTok, a Chinese company whose totalitarian government would just love to see America’s youth hate America.” While Roan’s popularity has risen thanks to the social platform, Maher hasn’t Provide evidence that her views are the result of her gathering information about the region on the platform. She has also repeatedly expressed her commitment to national and international politics.

“I know you are moved by what you see there,” Maher continued. He acknowledged the horrors of Israel’s ongoing war, adding: “We all are – the dead Palestinian bodies. But it is strange that your generation did not seem nearly as moved by the Jewish corpses on October 7th.”

“I suspect that Generation Z’s hearts are being hardened by the propaganda you see on TikTok, where Jews like to be called ‘colonizers.'” But colonizers are invaders who have no history in an area, such as when Spain conquered the Mayans or when your mother took over Facebook,” Maher continued with the groan of a generational joke.

Israel, he said, is the homeland of the Jews, something that Maher said Roan could “look up” in the Bible, a book that is “terribly wrong about sex education, slavery, science and cooking,” but about ” Archeology” is right.

“Chappell, did you know that Palestine was like an Uber driver with a three-star rating for 2,000 years? Nobody wanted it,” Maher said. “And there never was an Arab country called Palestine. It was an orphan province. And if you ask people what they thought about it at the time, they would say it gave them the “ick.” But after World War II, and after the Jews were nearly wiped out in an actual genocide attempt, they decided it was time for their historic homeland to become a real country so they could finally defend themselves.”

“And the UN, we like them, don’t we?” he added, dripping with contempt. “Yes, they agreed and chose a land for each of the indigenous peoples.”

“One side agreed to it,” Maher said. “But the Arabs had a slightly different proposal. They said, ‘How about we keep everything and wipe you out?'”

During World War I, the Sharif Hussein of Mecca and the British High Commissioner Sir Henry McMahon attempted to negotiate an Allied agreement against Germany. The Sharif insisted that recognition of all Ottoman territories, including Palestine, was a must – something the British were ultimately unable to offer.

Britain had also assured the World Zionist Organization in a letter from Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour – the Balfour Declaration – that Palestine would be declared the “national home of the Jewish people”. The World Zionist Organization had attempted to “establish a homeland in Palestine secured by public law for the Jewish people,” but under Theodor Herzl had also considered areas in East Africa and Argentina as potential homelands.

The Anglo-French Declaration of 1918 promised Arab nations “the complete and final emancipation of the.” [Arab] Peoples…and the establishment of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous population.” But although the British did not have sovereign rights over Palestine at this time (the British established and then received Mandatory Palestine in 1920 In 1922 the Mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations), the British promised Palestine to the World Zionist Organization.

In the years that followed, the former Ottoman Arab nations were subject to three mandate classes. These nations included Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Transjordan. Three countries—Syria, Lebanon, and the area that would become Jordan in 1946—gained independence. The 1919 Paris Peace Conference set up a commission that concluded that the indigenous citizens of Palestine demanded a “serious change in the extreme Zionist program for Palestine of unlimited immigration of Jews” and believed that the Zionists had “a right to do so.” ‘to Palestine, based on their occupation over 2,000 years, could not be ‘seriously considered’.

Yet, despite the reservations of Balfour himself – who said: “As far as Palestine is concerned, that is [Allied] Powers has not made a statement of fact that is not admittedly false” – the British mandate, which referred to the nine-tenths of Palestine’s majority Arab population as the “non-Jewish communities of Palestine,” pressed on.

The founding of this “Jewish national home” began in 1922, but its roots went back even further. As usual, the history of the region always has another story that illuminates what came next.

You can watch the full clip from “Real Time with Bill Maher” in the video above.