"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The Egyptian-American comedian embraces a demonological form of anti-Zionism that leads him to rewrite history, recycle long-discredited antisemitic tropes, and promote the most baseless accusations of “false flag” violence by Jews
On Thursday 29 January, comedian Bassem Youssef appeared as a guest on the show of antisemitic ideologue and professional disinformation entrepreneur and Brigitte Macron defamer Candace Owens. Far from distancing himself from his host’s wild claims—whose recent delirious excesses include allegations of the involvement of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron and the French military in a supposed assassination plot against her, and assertions about the existence of a secret time-travel programme that have embarrassed figures as diverse as Alain Soral and Alex Jones—Youssef instead delivered nearly two hours of frenetic conspiracist Jew-hating discourse.
Throughout the exchange, he accused the State of Israel of secretly orchestrating a vast catalogue of false flag attacks, ranging from the mid-20th century to the present day.
Returning to the 1946 bombing of the British administrative headquarters at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel—almost two years before the creation of the State of Israel—Youssef misleadingly attributed the attack to the Haganah, the forerunner of the future Israeli army, despite the fact that the bombing was infamously carried out by the Irgun, a terrorist organisation rooted in revisionist Zionism advocating a “Greater Israel.”
Youssef then launched into a familiar antisemitic conspiracy trope: the claim that Jews murder their “own people” for political ends.
“So 1950–1951 Israel sends a Mossad agent and then he leads four to five different bomb attacks on Jewish synagogues and Jewish communities. They killed their own people.”
Candace Owens interjected:
“Like October 7th.”
“Yes,” Youssef replied.
From there, Youssef proceeded to accuse Israel’s intelligence services of responsibility for a cascade of attacks across decades and continents: the 1994 bombing of the Israeli embassy in London, the attempted attack on Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies in October 2001, and even the Bondi Beach terrorist attack in Sydney in December 2025—while describing the attacks of 11 September 2001 as a “false flag” operation:
“And then 1994, the bombing of the Israeli embassy in London. It was done by Mossad and then they kind of nailed two Palestinians for it. One month after 9/11—which is the biggest full flag operation—, in October 2001, there was an attack of the Mexican parliament by two Mossad individuals and… they pretended to be Palestinians but they were discovered before the bombing. [...] So you see all and of course we have the Bondi attack.”
Youssef then revives a conspiracist rumour portraying Arsen Ostrovsky, a human-rights lawyer injured in the Bondi terrorist massacre, as a crisis actor staging his own wounds:
“Ostrovsky who's like one of those trolls on Twitter. He happened to be on October 7th a survivor of October 7th and then he posts his picture, a selfie while he's on the floor and he has blood all over him. Yeah, that's the picture. [...] Which obviously looks fake. And then the best picture is the next picture when he's all bandaged. You see there's not a single point like drop of blood on the bandage and there's no self-respecting medic that will actually leave a face like this trench of blood. They will have to clean it first. How can you believe a country that lies 24/7 like this? How can we take anything that they say for face value?”
When Candace Owens reiterated her false claim that Charlie Kirk, killed on 10 September, 2025 by a 22-year-old American, was assassinated because he allegedly refused to collaborate with Benjamin Netanyahu, Youssef echoes her view:
“I do agree that he was kind of starting to wake up towards the end because he started asking the question.”
He also fails to challenge Owens’ remarks about supposed “Zionist” control of Hollywood—whom she describes as a “synagogue of Satan” and “psychopaths” whose brains are “wired to lie.” On the contrary, Youssef reinforces the narrative, extending it into a wholesale delegitimisation of modern history:
“They are changing history in front of us right now. [...] People now are reconsidering everything they were told about history from World War II to JFK to 9/11 to the Iraq war. Because we have seen an Olympic-level gaslighting. Because Israel doesn’t just lie to hide the truth. They lie recreationally. They just do because it’s fun for them. And the way that they just lie to wear you down. Because now you look at all of what is being told to us. How can you believe a country that has a very lucrative history of false flags operation?”
A few months earlier, on Egyptian television, Youssef openly acknowledged that he strategically calibrates his messaging when appearing in Western media. He explained that he was forced to concede—briefly—that Hamas is a terrorist organisation in order to secure airtime on shows such as Piers Morgan’s, and thereby gain the opportunity to communicate “things they would never otherwise hear.”
Bassem Youssef delivers two different messages—one for the West and another for the Middle East. He went on Egyptian TV and essentially told viewers: I tricked Piers Morgan. I said Hamas is a terrorist organization—not because I believe it, but because it allowed me to have two… pic.twitter.com/evhBerpi2s
— Brother Rachid الأخ رشيد (@BrotherRasheed) October 28, 2025
Widely covered in the United States during the two years of the Israel–Hamas war following the 7 October 2023 massacres, Youssef now commands a massive online following, with nearly 10 million followers on X and 7.4 million on Instagram.
In August 2024, his X account was temporarily suspended following a series of remarks about Jews. Among them, Youssef alleged that Israeli Jews exploit their status as the “chosen people” to steal Palestinian land and kill Palestinians.
A former icon of Egyptian television before emigrating to the United States in 2014, Youssef—who describes himself as “a clown”—has repeatedly dismissed accusations of antisemitism as “laughable.” Calling the label “overused,” particularly against Jews who support the Palestinian cause, he has claimed that antisemitism has “become a comic accusation,” wielded by “Zionists” as an intimidation tactic that has lost its power.
When his X account was again suspended or deactivated in August 2024, Youssef reacted defiantly. In one of his final posts, he wrote:
“Are you still scared to be called an antisemite by those Zionists?”
On Facebook the same day, he boasted that Zionists were “crying, whining and bitching” on his accounts about antisemitism.
For sixteen years, Conspiracy Watch has been diligently spreading awareness about the perils of conspiracy theories through real-time monitoring and insightful analyses. To keep our mission alive, we rely on the critical support of our readers.
