As President Trump continues to consider his options on whether or not to join Israel’s campaign against Iran, Comedy Central’s The Weekly Show podcast host Jon Stewart expressed confusion on Thursday on why Israel doesn’t just accept that we live in a world full of risk.
Stewart’s evidence for why Israel is acting counterproductively was thin, “And I want to step back for a second and talk about the macro idea of risk assessment within this world. The one thing about Israel that I truly do not understand is this idea of they won't live in a world of risk, but we live in a world of risk. There is no zero risk. It's this idea of if there is one suicide attack that is done by a Palestinian, well, then we must remove Hamas, or we must wage war until we are safe, and that just seems like a fundamentally flawed—”
First of all, it wasn’t just some lone suicide bomber blowing himself up at one bus stop somewhere. It was a full-on invasion that was, on a per capita basis, several times worse than 9/11. Furthermore, Stewart is just wrong on history. Hamas governed Gaza for well over a decade, and, on October 6, Israelis viewed any supporter of invading Gaza as a kook. On October 7, it became a matter of national survival.
As a tiny country, Israel’s margin of error is much smaller than the United States, but Stewart still wondered why Israel doesn’t copy our approach to nuclear proliferation, “The United States certainly lives in a world of risk. Russia has nuclear weapons, China has nuclear weapons, North Korea has nuclear weapons. They've all expressed at different times antipathy towards the United States or a desire to use them, in North Korea's case, against the United States. So this idea that we can create a world where there is no risk. It seems that what they create is a world of instability where everything is at risk.”
If there is one country that is going to take another country’s eliminationist rhetoric toward it deadly seriously, it is the Jewish one, but Stewart still turned to former Obama deputy national security advisor and current MSNBC talking head Ben Rhodes and wondered, “And so I just want to get at the underlying fundamental principle that is being deployed here that's causing such destruction in Gaza and all of this death as though you can create a world of no risk through violence. It makes no sense to me. Ben, what is your thought on that larger principle?”
Stewart was so far out in left field, he made Rhodes look reasonable by comparison. Rhodes did point out there are different levels of risk. Most important for this discussion is his Iran Deal versus an actual weapon, but that actually undermines Stewart’s point.
Israel didn’t bomb Iran during the Obama years when the deal was in effect. It didn’t bomb Iran during the first Trump administration after he withdrew from the JCPOA. It gave Trump 2.0 a chance to force Iran to give up its nuclear program peacefully and then took what it felt was a window of opportunity to deal a death blow after neutering Hezbollah and previous rounds of missile ping-pong with Iran that all stemmed from October 7.
Rhodes also warned that people thinking Iran will turn friendly if the regime falls should consider that it could be replaced by either an IRGC military dictatorship or civil war. While that’s a fair point to consider, his turning the conversation back to Gaza was less so, “You also could get a situation where, you know, even what we've seen in Gaza, do we really think that's going to bring meaningful quote unquote ‘peace’ over time?”
PBS/CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who is of Iranian ancestry, admitted later in the program that she believes Yasser Arafat didn’t agree to peace in 2000 because he was worried about being assassinated by his fellow Palestinians, so the question for all three is, what should Israel do? October 7 was not just some lone wolf attack. It was the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust that was bankrolled by Iran.
Here is a transcript for the June 19 show:
Comedy Central The Weekly Show
6/19/2025
4 Minutes, 19 Seconds
JON STEWART: And I want to step back for a second and talk about the macro idea of risk assessment within this world. The one thing about Israel that I truly do not understand is this idea of they won't live in a world of risk, but we live in a world of risk. There is no zero risk. It's this idea of if there is one suicide attack that is done by a Palestinian, well then we must remove Hamas, or we must wage war until we are safe, and that just seems like a fundamentally flawed—the United States certainly lives in a world of risk. Russia has nuclear weapons, China has nuclear weapons, North Korea has nuclear weapons. They've all expressed at different times antipathy towards the United States or a desire to use them, in North Korea's case, against the United States.
So this idea that we can create a world where there is no risk. It seems that what they create is a world of instability where everything is at risk.
BEN RHODES: Yes.
STEWART: And so I just want to get at the underlying fundamental principle that is being deployed here that's causing such destruction in Gaza and all of this death as though you can create a world of no risk through violence. It makes no sense to me. Ben, what is your thought on that larger principle?
RHODES: I think you put your finger on it there there's two things I'd say about this because the first is that there's been an Iranian nuclear program for decades and Israel's lived with that and Israel's done quite well in that world right and what we were trying to do is put a lid on that program, make sure they can't get a weapon. The risk is them having a nuclear weapon.
STEWART: Transparency and verification.
RHODES: Them having a nuclear weapon, now that's a different level risk but them having a few centrifuges operating if you have transparency verification you got inspectors all over there you're looking at the whole supply chain, like, that's a level of risk that you should be able to live with and my concern is in trying to remove all risk for itself in the sense—
STEWART: And for everybody.
RHODES: — if you remove that for everybody if you remove that government through violence it doesn't—we saw in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya in the Obama years—
STEWART: Right.
RHODES: — you get something usually worse. You either get the IRGC, the worst guys with guns in Iran will be the strongest guys or you get kind of a failed state civil war in a country of over 90 million people—
STEWART: Right.
RHODES: —with no plan for what comes next you also could get a situation where, you know, even what we've seen in Gaza, do we really think that's going to bring meaningful quote unquote "peace" over time?
