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Seth Rogen: ‘I Was Fed A Huge Amount Of Lies About Israel’

“You don’t keep all your Jews in one basket."

   DailyWire.com
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 08: Seth Rogen attends the 33rd American Cinematheque Award Presentation Honoring Charlize Theron at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on November 08, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California.
Amy Sussman/FilmMagic

Actor Seth Rogen may be Jewish, but he has some serious issues with the country of Israel and believes he and other Jews have been fed “a huge amount of lies” about the Jewish state.

Speaking on Marc Maron’s podcast, Rogen argued that Israel’s actual history is not the same history he was taught growing up, namely, that Palestinians were allegedly driven from their homes to make way for Jewish settlements.

“[As] a Jewish person I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life,” said Rogen, as reported by The Guardian. “They never tell you that, ‘Oh, by the way, there were people there.’ They make it seem like it was just like sitting there, like the [fu**ing] door’s open.”

Regardless of his opinions on Israel’s creation or Zionism, Rogen did concede that anti-Semitism exists and is a serious problem.

“I remember my dad frankly telling me, ‘People hate Jews. Just be aware of that. They just do.’ And it’s honestly something that I am so glad was instilled in me from a young age,” he said. “Because if it wasn’t, I would constantly be shocked at how much motherf***ers hate Jews.”

“It is pervasive and it is prevalent and it is to many Jewish people so confounding that they don’t assume it’s true. … I’ve tried to put a lot of thought into why it’s happened. … People obviously hate people who do not look like them, and I think people also have a weird fear of people who look like them, but do not believe the same thing they do fundamentally,” he continued.

Rogen, however, disagreed that a Jewish state was the exact solution to that problem, arguing that it makes no sense to put something so fragile in one specific place and chided Evangelical Christians for allegedly seeing Israel as the future destination of the end-times.

“You don’t keep all your Jews in one basket,” he said. “It makes no sense whatsoever.”

“It would be nice to live somewhere that was not a part of the Christian apocalyptic prophecy. … Maybe settle somewhere that the Christians don’t think you all have to die in order for the Apocalypse [to happen],” he continued.

Rogen and Maron (who is also Jewish), both said they would not live in Israel.

“To me it just seems an antiquated thought process,” Rogen said. “If it is for religious reasons, I don’t agree with it, because I think religion is silly. If it is for truly the preservation of Jewish people, it makes no sense, because again, you don’t keep something you’re trying to preserve all in one place — especially when that place has proven to be pretty volatile, you know? ‘I’m trying to keep all these things safe, I’m gonna put them in my blender and hope that that’s the best place.'”

As noted by The Guardian, Rogen and Maron received considerable blowback from Lahav Harkov, a senior contributing editor to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, who said on Twitter that the two made comments “from a position of really, really great privilege – and ignorance – if he can’t understand why Israel makes sense to millions of Jews around the world.”

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