During his controversial set at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia, comedian Dave Chappelle joked that he would use the phrase “I stand with Israel” as a code to alert fans he was facing censorship, according to JTA.
The state-sponsored show, which took place on Oct. 4 and featured a host of top international comedians, was criticized by Human Rights Watch and several other comedians who believed the event was aimed at deflecting from the Gulf nation’s history of free speech suppression. (The Biden administration accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of approving the assassination of a Washington Post journalist in 2018.)
But despite widespread condemnation of the show, Chappelle used his set, which came after television host Jimmy Kimmel was briefly pulled off air for a statement about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, to rail against the state of free speech in America.
“Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, that you’ll get canceled,” Chappelle said during his set. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m gonna find out.” He then added, “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”
At the end of his set, Chappelle told the audience of 6,000 that he feared returning to the United States, because he believed “they’re going to do something to me so that I can’t say what I want to say.”
He then told fans that in order to alert them if something had happened, he would use a code phrase:
“It’s got to be something I would never say in practice, so if I actually say it, you’ll know never to listen to anything else I say after that,” Chappelle said. “Here’s the phrase: I stand with Israel.”
