A Manhattan comedy club canceled Israeli comedian Guy Hochman’s show on Tuesday night after pro-Hamas groups protested outside of the venue. 

“The owner of the place was afraid and canceled the show,” Hochman told Jewish Insider, referring to Broadway Comedy Club, located near Times Square. “So, I did an alternative show for my audience outside freezing to death.”

“We are not giving up,” Hochman continued, adding that “another, big show” was planned for Wednesday evening. He did not disclose the location of the rescheduled show.  “We are the Jewish people and we want to live and laugh,” said Hochman. 

The owner of the venue, Carolyn Martin, did not respond to a request for comment from JI. 

City College of New York’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter was among the groups promoting the Tuesday demonstration on social media. It shared a post from the New York City chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement that said “victory” was achieved by the cancellation. CCNY SJP, which remains a registered student group, also participated in this month’s pro-Hamas protest in Queens that caused nearby schools and a synagogue to close early.  

Outside the comedy venue, masked demonstrators banged on drums, chanted and held signs that read “clean up the trash,” “death to the IDF” and “no war criminals in our city.” A heavy NYPD presence was called to monitor the protest. 

Hochman was reportedly detained at the airport for six hours of questioning on Monday when he arrived in Toronto after the anti-Israel group Hind Rijab Foundation filed a complaint about his service in the IDF. He was released after intervention from the Israeli consulate.

A producer for former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) weeknight show on the right-wing One America News Network has reportedly been fired after he shared a vehemently antisemitic social media post depicting Jews as cockroaches.

Vish Burra, who was a booker and script writer for Gaetz, had drawn widespread backlash for posting an AI-generated animated video last week showing him entering a “scheming room” with Stars of David on the door to find a group of cockroaches counting money, who scurry away upon his arrival. The post has since been deleted.

“I will expose the vermin in the venomous coalition and their transgression against MAGA, America First, and Kevin Roberts at The Heritage Foundation,” Burra said in another post to X, which has also been deleted. “It all starts with Susan Lebovitz-Edelman,” he wrote, referring to a Jewish trustee at the Manhattan Institute who is married to the hedge fund manager Joseph Edelman.

Lebovitz-Edelman, he wrote, “is behind the entire campaign to oust Kevin Roberts from The Heritage Foundation by using her leverage as a recent big dollar donor to take control of the organization.”

Burra’s firing was reported by The Wrap and The Independent on Monday.

OAN did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday afternoon.

Gaetz, a former far-right congressman from Florida, had defended Burra in a social media post Saturday and sought to brush aside the controversy, saying that his producer had “posted something dumb this week. He knew it was dumb and quickly deleted it.”

“I too have posted dumb things on social media without thinking — some I’ve deleted, some I haven’t. And I’ve had to pay some consequences along the way. Vish will too,” Gaetz wrote. “I’m not the internet hall monitor of any of my coworkers (thankfully.) I can say on the Matt Gaetz Show we do not believe in applying bigotry to any group of people, no matter where they live or how they worship.”

But Burra’s post faced blowback inside OAN. A Jewish anchor, Stella Escobedo, wrote on social media that she was “very hurt, disappointed and concerned that someone I work with — chose to post this.”

“Posts like these create violence toward Jews,” she said. “Dehumanizing a group is the first step on a road we’ve seen before. And that road leads to the mass murder of Jews.”

Burra has also faced scrutiny for other antisemitic posts recently highlighted by Escobedo, including comments in which he called a Jewish woman a “stinky yenta,” defended a Nazi Halloween costume and wrote that “America First means not being held hostage by a nearly century-old postwar consensus fairytale about what happened in World War 2.”

Burra, who has long been known as a provocateur within the MAGA movement, previously worked as a top aide to disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-NY).