Jerry Seinfeld arriving at a US Open tennis match on Sept. 11, 2022. Photo: Anthony Behar/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

Jewish stand-up comedian and actor Jerry Seinfeld said in an interview on the podcast “Honestly with Bari Weiss” this week that it’s “comedic” and “so silly” how anti-Israel activists have targeted him for supporting the Jewish state.

“It’s so dumb,” Seinfeld began telling Weiss, when asked if he feels comfortable being “politicized” without intending to be.

“We get protesters occasionally [and] I love to say to the audience, ‘I love that these young people they’re trying to get engaged with politics. We have to just correct their aim a little bit. They don’t seem to be understand that as comedians, we really don’t control anything.'”

Hundreds of protesters marched outside Seinfeld’s stand-up comedy show in Syracuse, New York, in December 2023, criticizing his support for Israel and accusing the Seinfeld co-creator of promoting what they called Israel’s “genocide” in the Gaza Strip during the ongoing war against Hamas terrorists.

Two months later, he was heckled as a “genocide supporter” by anti-Israel activists after he left an event at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan that featured Weiss, who is the founder of The Free Press and a former New York Times columnist. While the activists berated Seinfeld on the streets of New York outside the event in February, the comedian merely smiled and even waved at the protesters.

When Weiss asked Seinfeld why he reacted that way towards the demonstrators, he explained that it’s because “it’s so silly. They want to express this sincere, intense rage, but, again, they’re a little off-target. That to me is comedic.”

Earlier this month, one of Seinfeld’s stand-up shows in Norfolk, Virginia, was disrupted by around eight anti-Israel protesters in the audience. Seinfeld’s commencement speech at Duke University was also interrupted by similar protesters, who staged a walk-out shortly after he was introduced on stage.

Seinfeld visited Israel earlier this year in the aftermath of the deadly Hamas terrorist attacks that took place on Oct. 7. He told Weiss the trip was “the most powerful experience of my life” before he got teary eyed, thinking back to the experience he had in Israel.

Seinfeld also talked to Weiss about how wanting to make people smile is “one of the greatest Jewish traditions.”

“That’s why there are so many Jewish comedians and such a great tradition of comedy in the culture of Jewish people,” he explained. “With all their crap that they had to live with, they used their incredible brains to make each other laugh. You do what you have to do and save a big part of your head to laugh. Because that will get you through a lot of things.”