Do we like Jerry Seinfeld?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Nothing against LGBTQ+ rights turned up, but his contested remarks about 'Free Palestine' and an old trans joke leave this a genuine split decision.
Seinfeld is the stand-up behind the web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and the Netflix Pop-Tart film Unfrosted. The thread running through this card is Israel. JNS reported he has loved the country since working on a kibbutz as a teenager, and in December 2023 he flew in, met hostage families and toured Kibbutz Be'eri, one of the communities hit on 7 October.
At Duke University in September 2025, at a student event for a former Israeli hostage, he said the Klan was 'a little better' than the Free Palestine movement because it is open about its views. NBC, citing the Duke Chronicle, also reported him saying 'Just say you don't like Jews.' Duke said it doesn't preview speakers' remarks, and he had already been booed at its 2024 commencement.
This June, a streamer outside Madison Square Garden asked him to say 'Free Palestine' after a Knicks win. He laughed and said 'It doesn't exist.' The clip went viral on X, shared by anti-Israel accounts, while supporters read it as an ambush that he swatted away. In October, Chicago protesters interrupted his show; he answered sarcastically and said he'd send the cost of a heckler's ticket to Israel.
In Portugal, at least six acts pulled out of the Lisbon festival he headlines. None of them named him, though one said a featured name defends ideas she finds indefensible. Seinfeld and the organisers didn't respond to JTA. Take it as a boycott story told mostly by implication, not a clean case against him.
On the harm test, the record is mixed. We found no campaign against LGBTQ+ rights, no vaccine or climate nonsense and no election-denial grievance. There is a 2015 joke about trans people on his web series that PinkNews reported drew criticism, and in 2024 he told Bari Weiss he misses 'dominant masculinity' while saying he gets the toxic thing. The Israel remarks are the real argument, and where you land depends on whether you read them as defending Jews or dismissing Palestinians.
On how he treats people, the sources we read show nothing nasty. His one court fight in them was a copyright suit over Comedians in Cars, which a Manhattan court dismissed in 2019 as filed too late. In 2024 he told demonstrators confronting him to 'correct their aim', saying comedians 'don't control anything.' Hostage families' forum said he and his family were very moved on that Israel trip.