Dave Chappelle and "The Closer" (I): Space Jews

This blog has been mainly concerned with perspectives on cultural issues in New York City, especially the intersection of politics and the arts. How appropriate, then, that Dave Chappelle, like so many other stand-up comedians, learned his art in New York's comedy clubs. Truthfully, I would have been inclined to write this piece even if he didn't, but it seems history is on my side. I therefore intend to post a follow-up on other aspects of Chappelle's "The Closer" shortly after this.

The final installment of Chappelle's Netflix comedy series has generated controversy primarily because of his remarks about transgender people. But two of his more eyebrow-raising jokes are about Jews. I get that it's comedy; I even get the jokes, which apparently quite a few people didn't, given the tepid reactions. I don't think someone is going to attack a synagogue because of Chappelle's jokes. I don't think Chappelle should be "cancelled" - a word almost meaningless to those of us who disdain Twitter, hardly use Facebook and cancelled Instagram (literally - my account was hacked before I ever opened it).

But I do think the jokes are worth unpacking, because they tap into beliefs and assumptions that are shared by various critics of Israel, including some prominent voices in Congress. In fact, I used to share some of them myself. Now I don't even think they're funny, and certainly not true.

Israel is an appropriate target for a great deal of criticism - even a brief discussion of what I think they have done wrong would take an essay, not even a long blog post. (But we could start with their recent declaration of certain Palestinian human rights groups as "terrorist front" organizations - if they're channeling some of their money to the PFLP then arrest those responsible for that, don't ban the organizations.) But the underlying logic of Chappelle's jokes questions the legitimacy of the Israeli state, and makes a one-sided attack on a people who have suffered the most severe oppression of any race on earth. That should not go by without comment.

Jokes whose apparent target is Israel do not in themselves make Chappelle an anti-Semite; they do depend on some very insensitive assumptions, which he might or might not embrace when made explicit. (I wonder if Chappelle would give me a similar suspended sentence in the event some joke of mine contained unstated negative implications about people of color?) But having converted to Islam 20 years ago he may have no more objective a view of Israel than anyone else with a stake in the relationship between Jews and Muslims.

Chappelle spends plenty of time in "The Closer" explaining why he has nothing against the people he tells jokes about, but he neglects to extend this courtesy to Jews. Why? Each of the two jokes requires a fairly detailed fictional setup, and the punch line (the same for both) at first sounds like a non sequitur. Indeed, it is a non sequitur: the apparent target is Israel, not "Jews". He does warn his audience, after the first joke falls fairly flat, with perhaps a catcall or two, "It's going to get worse than that!" It's a telling comment, both a recovery line after a weak gag and a defiant refusal to apologize for offending anyone.

One joke (spoiler alert!) begins with a reference to recent news coverage of "U.F.O.'s" (a government report called them "U.A.P.'s" - Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). This leads to a shaggy dog story about a race of technologically sophisticated earthlings who left the planet long ago and have now returned to reclaim their former home: "Space Jews". The other begins with the story of a black slave who was manumitted only to become a particularly cruel slaveholder himself, which is to be made into a movie called "Space Jews". Both narratives might have their biggest appeal to woke leftists, who might not be inclined to sit through an hour laced with patter about "bitches" and "frumpy dykes" and a Chinese virus, so that alone could account for why they landed with a thud. (That the second received a slightly warmer reaction is probably due to the fact that it was second; Mark Twain observed a long time ago that he could have an audience in stitches by using the same bad punch line repeatedly.)

Chappelle obviously thought it was clear enough that the jokes were directed at the state of Israel, not "Jews" in general. But "Space Israelis" would surely be an even worse punch line, to say nothing of "Space right-wing Israeli politicians, religious fanatics and settlers", who might be the only legitimate targets. So you need a more concise punch line. But similar logic surely would not justify substituting "Palestinians", "Arabs" or "Muslims" in a comedy routine whose target was "Islamic extremists and terrorists"; so why is "Space Jews" okay? Why might people be inclined to dismiss the jokes about "Space Jews" as dumb but harmless when we would see the parallel case as bigoted, venal and ignorant? Responsibility for intransigent Israeli policies lies with those who support them, not with "Jews".

Chappelle's sci-fi fantasy suggests that the Jews became a diaspora in order to explore new worlds. This setup elides any mention of the fact that the Jewish people were driven out of their original homeland in one violent assault after another. Jesus of Nazareth was one of tens of thousands of Jews tortured to death on the cross by the Romans, while other Jews were murdered en masse, their religion violently suppressed and their main temple destroyed. Some astronauts. It's hard to see how this fantasy is any less insensitive than one that described the African diaspora as leaving on the Starship Enterprise rather than slave ships.

The Space Jews then return and "decide that they want to claim the earth for their very own" after "things go terrible for them on the other planet". This, at least, has the seed of truth: the primary drivers of migration to Israel, or what is called in Hebrew "Aliyah", have been pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia, the Holocaust, and, after the 1948 U.N. resolution creating Israel and Palestine, anti-Jewish laws, expropriations, racist riots and expulsion from Arab states. Vitriolic discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union was a later spur. These still searing pains certainly bear out the idea that things didn't go too well for us; they also make it a lot less funny, especially when dropped into a comedy routine with scant context.

The contrast of Chappelle's humor with historical reality is also concealed in the ambiguity of claiming "for their very own" a land to which, the joke implies, Jews were no longer entitled. Since the demise of the ancient Jewish empires, the land that is modern Israel was ruled at various times by the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Ottoman Turks and finally the British. Both Jews and Arabs had originally migrated there from Egypt, Syria and nearby nations, and both put up occasional resistance to foreign domination; but no native peoples ever held state power in the territory. Jews, who were present in much smaller numbers than Arabs at the end of the 19^th century, purchased land while the area was under British domination over the next several decades (mostly in flight from European oppression) and their combined resistance finally freed the area from colonial domination after more than two millennia. Hostility between the two religious and ethnic groups resulted in the U.N. decision to create two new nations where there had been none. Such is the alleged land grab attributed to these Jewish space travelers.

As for Jews enslaving their former oppressors, it is surely one of the most peculiar slave systems in history. The "enslaved" within Israeli borders not only have the right to vote and be represented in the Knesset but now form part of a coalition government. The slaveholders recently had to pull down their armored window shutters and run for cover as the elected representatives of the enslaved in Gaza rained 2,000 missiles down on them. I mean, I'm capable of appreciating irony: the "enslavement" is really a reference to various forms of discrimination, which I neither deny nor condone. But only with regard to Israel would anyone even get the hyperbole. Reference to people of color as being "enslaved" in the U.S. today would not even register as humor. Reference to Jews as manumitted slaveholders is pretty off the wall: some Israeli Jews are descendants of some of the most recent modern slaves, those forced to work in Nazi factories. I think Chappelle should seriously consider how far you can go with historical distortions before the label "anti-Semitic" becomes appropriate. Would Holocaust denial also be acceptable if it gets a couple of laughs?

Intended or not, the ultimate implication of the two jokes - that Jewish people have illegitimately occupied Israel and that they have enslaved the Palestinians - amounts to denying the legitimacy of Israel and the U.N. resolution that created it, an extreme position that is contrary to international law and directed at the sole democracy in a region of brutal, autocratic dictatorships.

Israel is a nation of refugees from Europe (not Europa), Asia and Africa (not Andromeda). Most who arrived were lucky to escape with their lives, most of their possessions having been expropriated and some of their relatives murdered. Dave Chappelle has also had some hard knocks, despite being the son of an American college professor and Dean of Students and a woman of considerable accomplishment, but he is now absurdly wealthy: the $20 million he made for his 1-hour-plus Netflix set (and it was not the first) is something like 10 times the lifetime earnings of the average college-educated American. From that position, with an international audience, social responsibility is about the least one could ask.

"Space Jews" doesn't seem to meet that standard, but taken literally it could describe one historical fact: after increasing hostility to them in Arab nations following the partition of Palestine, practically the entire Jewish population of some countries was airlifted to Israel. These Jews do get around, though not quite to outer space.