During his controversial set at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia, comedian Dave Chappelle joked that he would use the phrase “I stand with Israel” as a code to alert fans he was facing censorship.
The state-sponsored show, which took place on Saturday and featured a host of top international comedians, was criticized by Human Rights Watch and several other comedians who believed the event was aimed at deflecting from the Gulf nation’s history of free speech suppression. (The Biden administration accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of approving the assassination of a Washington Post journalist in 2018.)
“Clearly you guys don’t give a shit about what the rest of us think, but how can any of us take any of you seriously again?,” wrote Jewish-born comedian David Cross in a post on X. “All your bitching about ‘cancel culture’ and ‘freedom of speech’ and all that sh–t? Done. You don’t get to talk about it ever again.”
But despite widespread condemnation of the show, Chappelle used his set, which came after television host Jimmy Kimmel was briefly pulled off air for a statement about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, to rail against the state of free speech in America.
“Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, that you’ll get canceled,” Chappelle said during his set. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m gonna find out.” He then added, “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”
At the end of his set, Chappelle told the audience of 6,000 that he feared returning to the United States, because he believed “they’re going to do something to me so that I can’t say what I want to say.”
He then told fans that in order to alert them if something had happened, he would use a code phrase:
“It’s got to be something I would never say in practice, so if I actually say it, you’ll know never to listen to anything else I say after that,” Chappelle said. “Here’s the phrase: I stand with Israel.”
The set was not Chappelle’s first foray into Middle Eastern politics. At a May 2024 show in the United Arab Emirates, Chappelle called Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip a “genocide.” The comic is Muslim, and has frequently made advocacy for Palestinians a hallmark of his routines.
In a November 2022 monologue on Saturday Night Live, Chappelle also stirred controversy after he said that the “delusion that Jews run show business” is “not a crazy thing to think.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
