Short answer: No. John Mulaney has not taken a public pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian advocacy position. His public record touching Israel is limited to a comedic 2018 tweet about spotting Benjamin Netanyahu at a Paris gym and a June 2025 statement defending his wife, Olivia Munn, after an unrelated comment of hers was falsely tied to the Gaza war. He is Catholic; his closest link to Jewish identity runs through his first wife, Anna Marie Tendler, who is Jewish and was recurring material in his stand-up. No record of Israel-related donations, event appearances, or boycott participation or refusal. (As of August 2026.)
What John Mulaney has actually said and done
- January 20, 2015: Mulaney appeared onstage with Nick Kroll at a 92nd Street Y event where Kroll, performing a comedic character, made critical remarks about Israeli settlements. The settlement criticism belonged to Kroll's bit, according to Mondoweiss, not to a substantive statement from Mulaney himself.
- June 13, 2018: Mulaney posted a photo on Twitter (now X) of Netanyahu working out at a Paris hotel gym, captioned with lines from a James Fenton love poem. The Times of Israel covered it as a lighthearted, comedic juxtaposition rather than a political statement about Netanyahu or Israeli policy.
- June 8, 2025: Olivia Munn told People she does not let her children watch the YouTube children's host Ms. Rachel because she personally finds the videos hard to sit through, a comment that made no reference to Israel, Gaza, or the war, per HuffPost.
- June 11, 2025: After Ms. Rachel responded online by pivoting to her advocacy for children in Gaza, commenters falsely conflated Munn's unrelated remark with indifference to Palestinian children's deaths, and Munn's family began receiving violent threats. Mulaney posted publicly that "an innocent comment my wife Olivia Munn made about what children's programs we like has somehow, unbelievably, been conflated with not caring about the deaths of children in Gaza," and said the resulting threatening messages to his wife and kids needed to stop. Both HuffPost and Yahoo Entertainment report this as a defense of his family against online harassment, not a policy statement on Israel or Gaza.
- Spring 2025: On his Netflix series "Everybody's Live," Mulaney made Jewish-culture-themed jokes, including a bit on how "The Diary of Anne Frank" is taught in schools, which Hey Alma says land as affectionate rather than at Jews' expense. No episode or interview found addresses Israel directly.
The context behind the headlines
John Mulaney is a stand-up comedian and former SNL writer, raised Catholic in Chicago. He has no documented pattern of political advocacy on Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in either direction. His comedy has occasionally touched Jewish culture and identity, first through his 2014 marriage to Anna Marie Tendler, who is Jewish (the couple divorced in 2021), and more recently through recurring bits on "Everybody's Live." Neither line of material addresses Israel as a state or the conflict itself.
His only social-media brush with an Israeli public figure is the 2018 Netanyahu gym photo, framed by the Times of Israel as a celebrity-sighting joke rather than commentary on Israeli policy. The one 2025 moment where his name got tied to Gaza discourse was defensive in nature: his wife made an unrelated comment about a children's show, it was misread online as callousness toward Palestinian children, and Mulaney publicly objected to the threats his family received as a result, without weighing in on the war itself. No record surfaced of Mulaney making Israel-related donations, performing at pro-Israel events, joining a cultural boycott of Israel, or publicly refusing to perform there.
The bottom line
There is no evidence John Mulaney has ever advocated for or against Israel. He is not Jewish himself, though his first wife is; his few brushes with the topic are a comedic tweet and a family-defense statement unrelated to any Israel policy position. He should be treated as neutral or undeclared on Israel, not as a supporter or opponent, and that read could change if new statements surface.
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Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
