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Democratic New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind in 2011. Michael Nagle\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
By Charlie McCarthy | NEWSMAX<\/p>\n
NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” faced protests outside its studio before the\u00a0show’s latest episode over a recent joke about about vaccinations in Israel.<\/p>\n
Hours before Saturday’s show aired, a crowd led by former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind chanted “Shame on NBC!”\u00a0and “Anti-Semitism is not funny!”\u00a0outside NBC’s entrance in midtown Manhattan.<\/p>\n
During the Feb. 20 “Weekend Update segment, comedian Michael Che said: “Israel is reporting that they’ve vaccinated half of their population. I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half.”<\/p>\n
Jewish groups claimed\u00a0the comment was anti-Semitic. Hikind posted a video of Saturday’s\u00a0protests\u00a0on Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It’s amazing that they have not apologized yet,”\u00a0Hikind told\u00a0the New York Post<\/a>. “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.”<\/p>\n Hikind promised to do “whatever has to be done”\u00a0to promote\u00a0the issue.<\/p>\n “I’m not going to be silent about this stuff that really endangers the Jewish people,”\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n Israel, which has become a world leader in COVID-19 vaccination, is almost three-fourths Jewish.<\/p>\n Researchers earlier this month said\u00a084 percent of Israel’s 70-and-older population had been fully immunized with the Pfizer-BioNTech two-shot vaccine,\u00a0per CNBC.<\/a><\/p>\n Vaccination rates of Israeli Arabs are much lower than Jews, in part due to distrust of the government in the Arab sector, according to The Christian Science Monitor.<\/p>\n