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'You don’t get to just sit there and enjoy it'
A chat with the guy who heckled Jerry Seinfeld
Alex McKinnon
June 19, 2024
By now you’ve probably seen the footage of two protesters disrupting Jerry Seinfeld’s show at QUDOS Bank Arena in Sydney on Sunday.
The footage used by most media outlets was shot by Australian Jewish Association CEO Robert Gregory, who also did an extensive round of sympathetic media appearances on Monday, including on Channel Nine, Channel 7 and FOX News.
Surprisingly, no media outlet used footage of the protest taken by one of the protesters themselves. It was published on the Instagram page of Little Palestine at Albo’s, the months-long protest encampment outside Anthony Albanese’s electorate office in Marrickville.
Aboud was one of the protesters who disrupted Seinfeld’s show on Sunday night. He was born in Jordan after both sides of his family were expelled from Palestine during the 1948 Nakba.
He says he’s not surprised that the way most media reports have framed the story.
“I wasn’t expecting the media to report on it fairly, given what we’ve seen over the last eight months,” he says. “I haven’t bothered to read the articles. I’ve seen the headlines, which kind of made me laugh — they were saying I was ‘savaged’ by him, but his responses were so weak. If anything, their reactions revealed them for the racist genocide-enabling ‘savages’ that they are."
Nor was he surprised by the fact that no journalist tried to contact him before publishing their stories.
“A person I know read the Herald’s article [about the protest] and emailed them complaining that their report was biased,” Aboud says. “They shared our video with them, and we sent a statement through to the reporter. The Herald revised the story a little bit and included our video, but it’s still very biased toward Jerry Seinfeld. Besides the Herald, we haven’t been approached by any other media.”
Aboud also expected the hostile reception he got from the QUDOS Bank Arena audience.
“I didn't go in there thinking the crowd would support what we were doing. I didn’t even expect empathy or compassion. The audience was mostly an older white demographic,” he says. “I was a bit concerned that people would get violent, but luckily that didn’t happen.”
“The crowd booing and laughing, and the media’s biased anti-Palestinian reporting, highlights their collective lack of compassion and humanity. It is an indictment of how a live-streamed genocide can continue for eight months unchecked.”
In spite of the negative coverage, Aboud says the protest was a resounding success, given how quickly it all came together.
“Someone reached out to someone I know — they had bought tickets to [Seinfeld’s] show not realising what his political stance [on Israel] is, so when they realised, they offered their tickets to someone to go and disrupt the show,” he says. “The tickets we had were about $500 each, I think.”
“My friend and I spoke about what we would do a couple of times over the last week — we looked at past actions overseas, what the responses were, things like that. We thought of a few things we wanted to say. On the day, I wrote a little paragraph of things I wanted to try and get out. I think I got most of it out, which I was pretty pleased with.”
“I do think it would have raised awareness [of Palestine] for some people,” he says. “Even if it didn’t in that room, the story was on the news, on the radio, on social media. That conversation is happening now. The Herald article was very biased against us, but it talks about Caliber 3, which we mentioned at the show, and about manufacturing consent for genocide. So people will read that, and might look into it further.”
Caliber 3 is an Israeli military training camp on occupied land in the West Bank that runs a “counter-terrorism boot camp” for tourists who “want a taste of the Israeli military”.
Its “Commando Tourism” offerings include the IDF Shooting Adventure, “an exciting one-of-a-kind program that puts you, your family and friends in the boots of a combat soldier for 2 hours through live demonstrations, training, shooting, and learning about the most moral army in the world, the soul of Israel.”
“Adults and children train side-by-side making this a fun activity for the whole family.”
Caliber 3 rates the Shooting Adventure as “suitable for visitors age 4+”.
In 2018, the camp posted photos of Seinfeld and his family visiting the site, including photos of Seinfeld and his children posing with assault weapons. The photos were taken down after an online backlash. Seinfeld himself later posted photos of his visit to the Israeli Air Force’s Ramon airbase, alongside the caption: “Bombing. World of difference between them and me.”
Aboud cites Seinfeld’s Caliber 3 visit when discussing Seinfeld’s dismissal of his and other protests, like the Duke University students who walked out of his commencement address at a graduation ceremony in May.
“His response to other protests has been ‘I’m just a comedian, why are you targeting me?’ He brought up his religion, the fact that he’s Jewish.”
“It's the Jewish comedians, that's who we have to get,” Seinfeld said at the time. "They're the ones doing everything."
“I went in there expecting he would say the same sort of things, which is why I was very clear that this has nothing to do with religion. It’s colonisation,” Aboud says.
“Imagine if I, as a Palestinian, was going to a training camp and simulating shooting Israelis, or saying that I stand with a country that’s committing an act of genocide against another people,” he says.
“Part of what I said [during the protest] was that [Seinfeld] and his wife are manufacturing consent for the genocide by spreading Israeli propaganda. His wife helped to fund the Zionist counter-protesters at UCLA against a peaceful Palestinian solidarity encampment. The fact that they’re supporting and standing with Israel while they’re committing this genocide — isn’t that enough reason to protest them and their views?”
“People are being murdered, maimed. Their houses are gone, their hospitals, the roads. Their whole lives are being flipped upside down. If you’re going to a show where someone supports committing a genocide, I’m sorry, you don’t get to just sit there and enjoy it without expecting people to want to protest it.”
Despite the negative coverage, the protest is already having an effect.
“Someone reached out and said their family had tickets [for Seinfeld’s Tuesday night show] but they no longer wanted to go,” Aboud says. “They offered their tickets to someone who would go and do a similar action.”
Footage from that protest, which took place last night at Seinfeld’s show at Sydney’s International Convention and Exhibition Centre, is now doing the rounds.
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