via TRND ·
Seth Rogen reignited a years-old controversy after comments he made on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in 2020 resurfaced, drawing fresh attention online.
Rogen, who is Canadian-American and was raised attending Jewish schools and Jewish summer camp in Vancouver, made the remarks while promoting his film An American Pickle. His parents reportedly met on a kibbutz in Israel.
“[As] a Jewish person I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life,” Rogen told Maron, who is also Jewish.
He went on to criticize what he described as an incomplete telling of Israel’s founding.
“They never tell you that, ‘Oh, by the way, there were people there,’” Rogen said. “They make it seem like it was just like sitting there, like the f***ing door’s open.”
The conversation covered broader territory as well. Rogen said he did not believe a Jewish state made sense as a means of preservation, arguing that concentrating a population in one volatile location carried its own risks. He also said he would not choose to live in Israel himself, a position Maron said he shared.
Elsewhere in the discussion, Rogen said his father had told him plainly as a child that “people hate Jews,” adding that he was grateful the warning had been instilled in him early.
The remarks drew backlash at the time from commentators who accused Rogen of minimizing Israel’s founding, while others defended his comments as a legitimate reflection on how Jewish history is taught. Rogen had previously signed a public statement supporting Israel during its 2014 offensive in Gaza.
