'Antisemitism isn't funny': Protest against SNL Israel joke outside NBC

Protesters chanted "Shame on NBC!" and "Antisemitism is not funny!" outside the network's West 49th Street entrance.

ANCHOR COLIN JOST (left) and anchor Michael Che during Weekend Update on ‘Saturday Night Live’ last year. (photo credit: WILL HEATH/NBC/TNS)
ANCHOR COLIN JOST (left) and anchor Michael Che during Weekend Update on ‘Saturday Night Live’ last year.
(photo credit: WILL HEATH/NBC/TNS)
A crowd gathered outside NBC headquarters in New York City on Saturday night to protest against a joke about vaccinations in Israel from last week's episode of Saturday Night Live, shortly before this week's episode aired, according to the New York Post.
Dov Hikind, a former NY state assemblyman and founder of Americans Against Antisemitism, organized the protest, stressing in an invite to the event on social media that NBC needs to be told that "antisemitism is NEVER funny."
Protesters chanted "Shame on NBC!" and "Antisemitism is not funny!" outside the network's West 49th Street entrance, according to the newspaper.
Activists and organizations have expressed outrage at the joke by comedian Michael Che, who stated during the Weekend Update segment of SNL that "Israel is reporting that they’ve vaccinated half of their population. I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half."
"It’s amazing that they have not apologized yet," Hikind said to the Post. “They did something so egregious, so horrible; I’m personally sick and tired of a major network like NBC indulging in spreading hate. That’s basically what they did.”
“I’m not going to be silent about this stuff that really endangers the Jewish people,” added Hikind.
 

In the invite to the event, Hikind stressed that "no one needs to get cancelled but lots of people need to get educated about Jew-hate." In a video on Twitter, he said that "we are going to NBC to educate, not to crucify anybody. We are going there to say 'this is not funny.'"