Staff at a prominent standup comedy venue established by American Jews in Amsterdam canceled an Israeli comedian’s show and then falsely claimed police had ordered it, according to the performer.
Organizers at Boom Chicago told Yohay Sponder that his show, slated for Jan. 25, could not take place because they’d “talked to the police and they said it may be very hard to secure,” the comedian said during a Jan. 23 show.
“We called the police because we wanted to understand what’s the problem that’s waiting for us [...] at another location,” said Sponder. “The police said: No, we didn’t talk to them,” he added.
The venue’s manager, Sponder continued, “was so nice, he wrote us an email saying: ‘Guys, I can totally help you, maybe we can find a place that’s a Jewish venue.’”
Sponder quipped: “Yeah, maybe in an attic, or maybe at Anne Frank’s House, it’s not that far.”
The canceled show had been fully booked, he noted.
The Jewish-American co-founders of Boom Chicago, Greg Shapiro and Pep Rosenfeld of Illinois, did not reply to JNS queries regarding Sponder’s claim by time of print.
Before Sponder publicized his version of the story, the club published a statement that did not mention police but cited heated comments on social media ahead of the show.
“We are deeply saddened that this situation has escalated into a polarised debate about Gaza,” the statement said. “In our 32 years of existence, we have never experienced anything like this. Very nasty criticism has come at us from all sides, even though we genuinely tried to do what was best for everyone.”
Shapiro and Rosenfeld in 2016 staged a show that featured them dressed as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, whom they accused in the show of promoting violence. They portrayed Clinton killing Trump on stage and extracting his bloody, beating heart.
The Netherlands’ Republicans Abroad chapter condemned the portrayal as violent incitement and said that “it speaks volumes as to their double standard.”
Shapiro and Rosenfeld admitted that the show had a double standard. “There’s a double standard, sure,” Shapiro told a journalist at the time. Rosenberg added: “Comedians live by double standards. But it’s kind of worse when a presidential candidate lives by one, too.”
On Nov. 7, dozens of Arab and Muslim men assaulted Israelis returning from a soccer match in Amsterdam. The attack, the largest antisemitic incident in the Netherlands since the Holocaust, has profoundly shaken Dutch Jews’ feeling of safety, many of them have said.
