Pete Davidson praised for ‘beautiful’ SNL cold open on Israel-Hamas conflict

Actor and comedian Pete Davidson has received widespread praise and support online after he opened this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL) by sharing an anecdote about dealing with his late father’s death and addressing the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, crossed the border into Israel and launched an attack last Saturday which left 1,300 people dead.

Israeli forces retaliated by bombarding the Gaza Strip, where the organisation is based, with Gaza saying up to 2,329 Palestinians have been killed.

Davidson began SNL by saying: “This week we saw the horrible images and stories from Israel and Gaza, and I know what you’re thinking: ‘who better to comment on it than Pete Davidson?’

“Well, in a lot of ways, I am a good person to talk about it because when I was seven years old, my dad was killed in a terrorist attack, so I know something about what that’s like.”

Davidson’s dad Scott worked as a firefighter, and died while responding to the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11.

The entertainer continued: “I saw so many terrible pictures this week of children suffering – Israeli children and Palestinian children – and it took me back to a really horrible, horrible place.

“No one in this world deserves to suffer like that, and especially not kids.”

He went on to add that his mother “tried pretty much anything she could do to cheer me up” following his father’s death, buying him a DVD a year later which “she thought was a Disney movie” but was in fact Eddie Murphy’s 1983 stand-up special Delirious – one which is definitely not for eight-year-old children.

“We played it in the car on the way home and when she heard the things Eddie Murphy was saying, she tried to take it away, but then she noticed something: for the first time in a long time, I was laughing again.

“I don’t understand it - I really don’t and I never will – but sometimes, comedy is really the only way forward through tragedy.

“My heart is with everyone whose lives have been destroyed this week, but tonight, I’m going to do what I’ve always done in the face of tragedy, and that’s [to] try to be funny.

“Remember, I said ‘try’,” he concluded.

After the cold open was shared by SNL online, users on X (formerly Twitter) have commended Davidson’s “beautiful” and “gorgeous” speech:

The clip has been viewed more than six million times on X at the time of writing.

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