How Helium Comedy Profits from the Genocide in Palestine
ON INCITEMENT OF VIOLENCE
In the case of Helium Comedy Club, it isn’t even that they have not spoken up against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, like LaughsPDX has released a statement condemning the violence committed against Palestinians. Instead Helium Comedy Club and the owners, the Grossman brothers, have made their position clear. They have chosen to platform Michael Rapaport, someone who doesn’t even do comedy at this point, and rather propaganda for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).
The amount of community backlash and condemnations of choosing to feature this racist pundit has only increased exponentially in the last weeks. Brad Grossman, the Chief Operating Officer of the national chain, has been stalking the accounts of those that oppose platforming Rapaport, including my stories regarding the scheduled shows. Ownership and the management of the club is fully aware of the situation, and has decided to go forward with the weekend of performances by the racist Rapaport on the 12th-14th of the month, which activists intend to protest.
Now we understand why. As I came to discover research that is beginning to be spread widely to fellow journalists; they are not just ignoring the calls to cancel the upcoming shows based upon Rapaport inciting violence. It turns out that the ownership of Helium Comedy Club actively benefits from the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
We have already discussed the inhumanity of Rapaport’s statements, and how he is using his social media to promote the IOF and spread misinformation that even the Biden administration has had to walk back. Other content creators have been proven to be paid out by the Israeli Occupation Forces for posts that promote their onslaught in the occupied territories. Since October 7th his entire platform has shifted from his lackluster attempt at comedy, to a much darker trend in which he has used the word “eradicate” — akin to the Nazis- without remorse.
In December, he took an all expenses paid trip to Israel, where he met with IOF forces and filmed, documentary style, the scenes of the October 7th attacks. In a discussion with a fellow journalist, we remarked how Michael was dishonest and clearly operating on behalf of the IOF. He failed to disclose that there are a number of things people visiting the Kibbutzim are not allowed to say, and things they are directed to say.
As his comment section is full of what are clearly Israeli bot accounts and as the entirety of his content is now simply promoting the military lies that have been disproven (like mass rapes, using hospitals as “command centers” and beheading babies) while hosting interviews with Israeli publicists; It isn’t hard to ask, is Michael a paid mouthpiece for the Israeli government and how much is he paid?
But here’s a quick reminder of his most heinous statements.
He has called Gazans living in the Strip “terrorist animals”, has called for Israel to “eradicate, and when I say eradicate, I mean kill”, every hostage that they have taken from Gaza and the West Bank -despite many of them being children arrested for protesting the military occupation- and in the same video said “and if there’s kids around they should be stripped down to their underwear…”. He posted a video on Christmas Eve, where he laughed and celebrated that there would be no holidays in the Gaza Strip, because “Santa can’t land on rubble”. In December, he posted pictures of Palestinian civilians, including UN human rights workers, who were abducted by IOF forces, stripped naked, loaded into trucks and driven to pits where many of them were executed and bulldozed into mass graves, with the caption “Happy Chanukah!”.
While he claims that these horrific statements are merely “free speech”, and thinks that being called a racist and a Zionist is a badge of honor; he also actively works to silence anyone that speaks out for a ceasefire in support of innocent civilians in Palestine. In unhinged rants, he has maniacally laughed at the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay, targeted by Zionists and white supremacists for refusing to shut down students’ right to protest, and the banning of activists that do nothing more than share verified videos out of Gaza that depict the violence that Israel is inflicting on babies and children.
His platform works directly with Israeli operatives to dox and defame anyone that he paints as “antisemitic” for simply commenting on posts in support of Palestine or burning an Israeli flag (a protected act of free speech). Notably he coordinates with the Israeli account “Jew Hate Database” on many occasions. This dangerous account, clearly a tool of the State of Israel, will take clips of people expressing their support of Palestine and disdain of apartheid and occupation by Israel, and claim that they are “Jew Haters”, while doxing their personal information for their followers to threaten.
In that vein, he has targeted our Portland community as people have spoken up against his scheduled performances. While I have received continued hate messages and threats from his followers, as an antifascist and a journalist, this is par for the course. In the aftermath, he doxed the owner of Coy&Co, a floral shop in Portland by posting a picture of the business owner with her name. His goons also began to target the owner of Erica’s Soul Food, a food cart attached to the Worker’s Tap. I will discuss the racist targeting of a black woman in Portland in the next article, but to say the least, this doxing has led her to feel unsafe due to incidents of vandalism and stalking that began shortly after she spoke against Rapaport.
However, a few things must be made clear. First, Palestinians are semitic, and calling for a ceasefire, so children can live full lives, is not “antisemitic”. Second, there are millions of American Jews who do not support the State of Israel and organize against the ongoing genocide, such as Jewish Voice for Peace.
Third, Netanyahu is a proven criminal and corrupt leader of a far-right coalition. His policies and response of collective punishment have been met with wide-scale protests in Israel, even long before October 7th. The recent protests stemmed from anti-war parties, and from families of the hostages held by Hamas. The families denounce Netanyahu, as they have pointed out that the current military response does not discriminate, has murdered 35,000 civilians, is failing to meet its goals, and has led to the death of several of the hostages (such as the three that were shot by members of the IOF). In the aftermath of a series of protests at the beginning of November, the Israeli Supreme Court allowed military police to ban all anti-war protests, and to go after Arab Israelis that expressed dissent.
Rapaport, alongside other B-list celebrities like Brett Gelman, have visited the state of Israel, painting themselves as indigenous to the region. They have all visited the scenes handpicked by IOF handlers, and have repeated their claims without question. They are ignorant, or feigning ignorance, of the situation in Israel. They paint the nation as a “shining democracy” despite the current fascist coalition that has led the nation down a darker path, and one which is currently a military council.
Netanyahu’s government is corrupt, and widely unpopular. It is his far-right coalition that in 2014 pushed through the fascist “Nation-State Law” which declared Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people alone”.
Regardless, these actions and malicious misinformation on the part of Rapaport, fueled the calls to cancel the shows. Residents of Portland pointed out that he was inciting violence and now targeted business owners in our community. The call to action was seen by COO Brad Grossman, and ignored. Yet, while this is evidence that they have chosen their side on the side of Rapaport’s statements supporting genocide; the story goes down a deeper rabbit hole.
THE PROFIT INCENTIVE TO GENOCIDE
Not only do the owners of the Helium Comedy Club support Israeli apartheid; they are part of a group of wealthy benefactors that funds the far-right and benefits from the current situation in Israel.
The Helium Comedy club is a national chain with locations in Portland, Buffalo, St Louis, Indianapolis, and a flagship location in Philadelphia which manages booking and where the owners are based. They operate under the legal name Center Stage LLC, owned by Marc Grossman and his brother Brad (the man who has been stalking the Instagram of activists and comedians alike). Their executive producer and showrunner is a man named James Chairman.
The Grossman brothers also own some other clubs separate from the Helium brand name, the Cap City Comedy Club, Goodnights Comedy Club, and the Bananas Comedy Club.
Marc Grossman, co-owner of the clubs, earned his fortune working as a trader for the Susquehanna International Group (SIG), a trading firm that was founded by a group of students from SUNY Binghampton. A particularly cutthroat trading firm, they became rich during the Reagan years. SIG is known not just for their long history of avoiding taxes and pushing deregulation to enrich themselves; they also make huge contributions to Libertarian and other far-right causes in the US and Israel.
According to the Richard Rhys, in an article for PhillyMag.com published in 2011, “Marc Grossman was trading natural gas and electric futures for Susquehanna International Group in Bala Cynwyd, when he saw an opportunity downtown [Philadelphia] to open an ‘A’ room — stand-up jargon for a club that brings in national talent. He recruited fellow SIG employees as his investors to provide a budget big enough to pay marquee acts, something the Cabarets and Laff House couldn’t afford to do regularly, if at all.”
So the investors in Helium Comedy Club are tied to the shady trading firm, and have a vested interest in the success of the club. Grossman and his investors collectively benefited from years of their influence on politics, having built their wealth during the 2000s, and no doubt continue to hold stake in advancing far-right politics in the U.S. and Israel.
Two of SIG’s co-founders and billionaires Jeff Yass and Arthur Dantchik, are particularly notorious for their support of the far-right. Both are board members of the CATO Institute, a far-right group that pushes globalization and libertarian policies to enrich the billionaire class while working to influence economic policy.
Yass and Dantchik became Trump supporters after the 2016 election. Yass, in particular, has donated tens of millions to Trump and other GOP Political Action Committees (PACs) and fundraising groups. He is the 4th largest individual donor in the United States, using his “philanthropy” to further dodge taxes, and all of his political donations go towards far-right causes.
One of Yass’ main causes is so-called “school choice”. He is a major supporter of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education known for working to destroy public education and push charter schools and private education. Yass gives speeches all around the country about how public teachers unions are overpaid and lazy. In one speech, he painted the wage of Philadelphia teachers, roughly $117,000 after benefits, as a burdensome cost on the system while he benefits from the billions that he refuses to pay in taxes.
As Yass has been recorded saying, regarding the move of SIG in the 90s, “I would… fight for school choice. That’s the fundamental problem with the country. Nothing is more valuable than school choice. So as a gambler, I was like, well, I got to ask the guy who… has the best opinion. I want to bet with him. So it certainly made sense to me…. [It’s] pretty obvious that nothing could impact society as much as school choice.”
SIG financiers are working hard to dismantle public education and privatize schools in order to enrich themselves. Devos and Yass are both billionaires that benefit from charter school reforms, and destroying the bargaining power of teachers unions around the country.
In Pennsylvania, SIG and Yass have garnered the attention of residents, who have compiled documents proving their increasing influence on politics in the state. They denote that the shady firm has begun to fund justices, attempting to swing the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court in their favor. It follows a trend of billionaires that have worked to influence the SCOTUS to overturn Roe v Wade and rule in the favor of elites. Clarence Thomas is the prime example of a corrupt justice in the court, who takes kickbacks, like private homes, RVs, and funding his children’s college, for ruling on behalf of his benefactors.
Their influence extends far beyond educational reform, such as Yass denying climate change to advance fossil fuel production that Trump has promised, and working to denounce labor unions and strikes. SIG has billions in investments in weapons manufacturers, oil, natural gas, and other industries. They seek to push the nation down a far-right path.
Yass and his notoriously secretive firm have been fined over 160 times for various crimes. Several of the firms that SIG invests in have also faced six-figure signs in the recent years. Despite the allegations of financial crime, they face few repercussions in a nation that does not charge white collar crime, partially due to Yass’ political donations. In June 2022 ProPublica claimed Yass has “avoided $1 billion in taxes” and is “pouring his money into campaigns to cut taxes and support election deniers”.
Now how is Helium Comedy Club itself benefiting from the current political climate in Israel and the Palestinian genocide?
Yass and Dantchik fund and serve on the board of an organization called CLAWS, a far-right “judicial reform” organization which has been instrumental in financing the trend to influence the American and Israeli judicial systems towards extremism.
Their most recent policy push was part and parcel to the genocide in Gaza. They were largely responsible for financing the Netanyahu coalition’s criminal “judicial reform”. The neo-fascist coalition of far-right parties sought to curb the power of the judiciary to prosecute Zionist settlers for the murder of unarmed Palestinians, and end limits on expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. As we saw at the end of 2023, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected the undemocratic reforms.
This denial to Netanyahu, already looking at criminal proceedings once the war ends due to corruption in the government, led to massive protests inside the apartheid state. The protests were a “color revolution”, organized through a group called the Kohelet Policy Forum.
The KPF is so influential on the Israeli far-right that they were described by Ha’aretz, an Israeli media outlet, as “the right-wing think tank that quietly runs the Knesset”. With control of Israel’s parliament, they also have begun to influence the Israeli Supreme Court. Funded by Jeff Yass, the Kohelet Policy Forum works to undermine democracy through buying off judges, taking advantage of lifetime appointments and virtually no checks on judicial authority to make sure they can control decisions of the court; akin to the billionaire influence on the Supreme Court of the United States.
The KPF was instrumental in the drafting and financing of the explicitly racist “Nation-State Law” which codifies apartheid into law and makes the expansion of illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank and along the border with Gaza, a constitutional requirement of the Zionist government.
It is this law that declared Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people alone”. This law is so racist that several Israeli judges have deemed that it amounts to legal discrimination against Palestinians, before they instituted the law after several appeals.
CLAWS works extensively with David Horowitz and his racist and Islamophobic, “David Horowitz Freedom Center”, which is mostly known for its “Jihad Watch” website. The “Center” is affiliated with known extremists such as Dutch white supremacist politician Geert Wilders, Pamela Geller, the openly Neo-Nazi English Defense League and more. The “Jihad Watch” website was used by Norwegian Neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, who cited the work of the “Center” on 64 separate occasions in his manifesto. The manifesto he wrote before Breivik went on to commit the 2011 Oslo bombing and mass shooting at a youth summer camp for the labor party in Norway.
It should come as no surprise that, much like Michael Rapaport, Zionists work hand in hand with Nazi groups to codify the persecution of Muslims. The “Freedom Center” has been tied to a number of Anti-BDS, pro-Israel groups that work to silence dissent across American universities. One such group is “The Maccabee Task Force”, which after their use of “Jihad Watch” propaganda was exposed, had to distance themselves from the “Center”. These “student groups” are funded by American billionaires and enforce acceptance of the Israeli apartheid state, as they undermine Palestinian organizing.
“Jihad Watch” is so dangerous that it is considered an extremist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and others. Even fascist figures like propagandist Dinesh D’Souza, who propagated the 2020 election conspiracy, have condemned the group.
CLAWS, SIG, and the ownership of Helium Comedy Club are all a key to the recent escalation, and the Zionist parties that have led to the genocide in Palestine. They have funded the far-right parties that have increasingly called for the extermination of Palestinians, and for Israel to expand further into the Middle East. Their money and influence has helped to build the neo-fascist coalition in Israel.
While there are hundreds, if not thousands, of American companies with a stake in Israel, none has such a deep interest in the current government than the Susquehanna International Group. With a massive portfolio that invests in natural gas futures and weapons manufacturers; one has to wonder how much these men are directly profiting from the bombing and destruction of Gaza.
The Netanyahu coalition has led the illegitimate State of Israel down a path of fascism, by instituting the “nation-state” doctrine, and protecting illegal settlements in the West Bank — condemned by international law and even some Israeli courts. His polices of ethnic-cleansing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are highly unpopular, even within the apartheid state.
It is this current far-right coalition, and the parties compiling the Netanyahu regime, that has pushed the escalation of the theft of Palestinian land, as well as the whole-scale murder of civilians by settlers. That has instigated the series of crises we have seen unfold in the last decade, including the 2021 Sheikh Jarrah crisis that was a direct result of the government codifying the theft of Palestinian homes in broad daylight. Scenes of armed settlers arriving in Palestinian homes, and forcing them out or stealing their cattle at gunpoint, are coupled with the IOF threatening to murder Palestinians that resist.
Netanyahu’s policies, alongside the continued military blockade of the Gaza Strip, led directly to the October 7th attacks. It is also his government that for years funded Hamas, in order to sew political division among the Palestinian lands they were trying to divide and conquer.
The Susquehanna International Group, alongside the wealthy benefactors that enriched Marc Grossman, are the shadowy players that helped force Israel to accept the fascist “nation-state law”. The secret group of two of the wealthiest businessmen in America has worked tirelessly to enforce Israeli apartheid as the law of the land.
They have also funded scores of groups whose sole focus is to normalize Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians. The same groups that dox and defame anyone that expresses support for a ceasefire and ending indiscriminate bombing against families. The recent resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay is a prime example of this, where Zionist groups, funded by far-right billionaires, targeted the educator for refusing to ban the right to protest on college campuses.
This is something that Michael Rapaport celebrated. He is a part of that normalization of violence. His calls to “eradicate” hostages do not exist in a bubble. He uses his position as a B-List actor to spread lies and misinformation, and paints anyone that opposes genocide as “antisemitic”, while collaborating directly with Israeli accounts that target political opponents.
Rapaport benefits from his posts that platform propaganda for the IOF, as SIG and its benefactors have poured millions to influence Israel to adopt apartheid and genocide as policy platforms for the last three decades of Netanyahu’s reign.
So, it would seem that not only does Marc Grossman, and the investors of Helium Comedy Club, support the current state of Israel. They also benefit from featuring a man trying to claim that his clear calls to violence are comedy. By normalizing genocide and the indiscriminate bombing of children and families, and doxing anyone that denounces the unprecedented violence; wealthy elites like SIG financiers and the owners of Helium Comedy Club, have ensured that they can continue to profit from the bombs being built to slaughter civilians in Gaza, and the energy futures vested in the State of Israel.
Boycott Helium Comedy Club, as they benefit from the ongoing Palestinian genocide. Demand that other comedians and comedy clubs divest their support from the national chain. Sanction comedians that continue to ignore the calls to do their performances elsewhere. In conclusion, the Helium Comedy Club should be avoided, not just for platforming a propagandist for the IOF, but benefiting from the further normalization of hate.
