Comedian's Experience with Chelsea Handler

I lost my position as Chelsea Handler's opener after I spoke to her about

Palestine. My name is Salma Hindy.

I am a Canadian Egyptian stand-up comedian living in New York City.

Beginning in 2022, I opened for Chelsea Handler on two tours,

performed at

her Just for Laugh's Chelsea Handler Gala, and generally had a very

warm, loving, sisterly relationship with Chelsea

Handler, to the point where she

actually used to invite me to ride her private jet with her.

October 14 of 2023, I messaged Chelsea

asking her if she wanted to speak about the Palestine-Israel thing after

noticing that two of her closest friends, Amy Schumer and Sarah Silverman, had

posted some disgustingly racist, dehumanizing posts toward

Palestinians. I texted Chelsea about it lovingly,

to which she did not

respond. Immediately the next day, I got taken off of three

of the 12 upcoming tour shows. I was told that she had promised those

dates to somebody else. Regardless, Chelsea and I did end up going on

tour in December of 2023. We did four shows together in Canada.

After one of the shows, I spoke to Chelsea privately about

Palestine at dinner,

to which I found out that Chelsea Handler has actually been to

the West

Bank, and in her own words, she said, "It looked

like the Arabs had their souls sucked from their faces."

And yet, despite all of that, Chelsea still insisted on defending the

Israeli

government. During those four shows, by the way, she would introduce us as

a Muslim and a Jew on stage that were getting along very well.

During Christmas break, Chelsea Handler released a disgustingly

Islamophobic and dehumanizing video with Noa Tishby about

Israel and Palestine. As a response to that video, I posted

something in solidarity with the Palestinians without naming Chelsea.

In January, we had two shows coming up.

Chelsea canceled both of the shows at the last minute because of severe weather

issues. I didn't find out from Chelsea until after

it was announced to the public,

and I was in the hotel room waiting to go down to the venue.

Her team actually agreed to buy me my return ticket to New York, but they

refused to reimburse me for all of the flight and hotel costs that I had

already incurred. At that point, I didn't have enough money to continue

going on the tour. My team requested if she could give me an advance on one of

the shows so that I could purchase my ticket to go open for her on the upcoming

shows. She texted me saying that my agents were being very

difficult to work with. My manager, who was Jewish at the time,

told me that Chelsea Handler is trying to get rid of

me because of the Palestine thing, but she doesn't wanna say it so that she

doesn't incriminate herself. He told me I could go on the rest of the

tour with

her, but that she would never work with me

again.

At the time, I was financially devastated. That was my primary source of income.

I was newly estranged from my family, and I was terrified that if

I talked about this publicly, that I would be branded as difficult to

work with.

Seeing everything that's going down with Macklemore and Ed Sheeran made me be like,

"Yeah, duh, this happens to artists all the time."

But then I realized that I don't

like that reaction. This shouldn't be a normal thing.

We should be calling out people in power who are siding with an

apartheid oppressive state like Israel. As always, free Palestine.