Guest Post: Can't Take a Joke - Part 2

Oh great, now it’s well known Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle who accused the BBC (yes that BBC) of being “cowardly” and “cravenly afraid of giving offence” after they censored him for his Israel jokes.

Here they are: 

“I’ve been studying Israeli Army Martial Arts. I now know 16 ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back. 

People think that the Middle East is very complex but I have an analogy that sums it up quite well. If you imagine that Palestine is a big cake, well…that cake is being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew.” 

You know, the jokes aren’t nice but I’m sure a lot of us might let them slide or at least not come out with the harshest condemnations because we know that for comedians, no subject is off the board to poke fun at. Frankie Boyle is no exception, in fact, there is no limit to how low a level he will stoop to get a laugh and that includes jokes about Jews, Arabs, politicians, terrorists and disabled people - no one is spared!

But it is more the content of his letter to the BBC Trust ranting at the ‘injustice’ caused by the censoring of his antisemitic / anti-Israel jokes that causes us real offense: 

“I think the problem here is that the show’s producers will have thought that Israel, an aggressive, terrorist state with a nuclear arsenal was an appropriate target for satire. The Trust’s ruling is essentially a note from their line managers. It says that if you imagine that a state busily going about the destruction of an entire people is fair game, you are mistaken. Israel is out of bounds.“

Yes, he just openly called Israel an Aggressive, Terrorist State with a Nuclear Arsenal!!! I swear to the ordinary reader you would think he was talking about Iran (“we will wipe Israel off the map”) or North Korea! How is that okay? Then he says that we are destroying an entire people as though it’s our 9-5 day to day jobs.

He then continues: 

“The BBC refused to broadcast a humanitarian appeal in 2009 to help residents of Gaza rebuild their homes. It’s tragic for such a great institution but it is now cravenly afraid of giving offence and vulnerable to any kind of well drilled lobbying.” 

Yup the great Israel lobby, that powerful beast which leaves news organisations such as the BBC and The Guardian quaking in their boots should they dare mention a single negative word in the same sentence as the word ‘Israel’ or ‘Jew’. Really? The BBC is afraid of the pro-Israel lobby? Well that didn’t stop them writing a hundred articles condemning Israel in the past year since the defensive war, Cast Lead.

And then of course it leads to apartheid: 

“The situation in Palestine seems to be, in essence, apartheid. I grew up with the anti apartheid thing being a huge focus of debate. It really seemed to matter to everybody that other human beings were being treated in that way. We didn’t just talk about it, we did things, I remember boycotts and marches and demos all being held because we couldn’t bear that people were being treated like that." 

Yes it’s just like South-Africa was! Arabs can’t live in Israel (there are 1 million in Israel alone), they can’t vote (there are three Arab parties in the Israeli Knesset - Hadash, Balad and United Arab List), they cant buy homes in Israel (Arabs live in every city in Israel) and they can’t work in Israel (Arabs own shops, restaurants and drive taxis just like Jews do).

But where is this Israel-hatred from Frankie Boyle stemming from? A documentary of course! 

“A few years ago I watched a documentary about life in Palestine. There’s a section where a UN dignitary of some kind comes to do a photo opportunity outside a new hospital. The staff know that it communicates nothing of the real desperation of their position, so they trick her into a side ward on her way out. She ends up in a room with a child who the doctors explain is in a critical condition because they don’t have the supplies to keep treating him. She flounders, awkwardly caught in the bleak reality of the room, mouthing platitudes over a dying boy. 

The filmmaker asks one of the doctors what they think the stunt will have achieved. He is suddenly angry, perhaps having just felt at first hand something he knew in the abstract. The indifference of the world. ‘She will do nothing,’ he says to the filmmaker. Then he looks into the camera and says, ‘Neither will you’." 

There may be truth in the above paragraphs but it definitely does not paint the whole picture. How can there be a new hospital and not enough medicine to treat patients? That’s a contradictory statement right there. Even in Gaza, within the UN programmes and medical supplies allowed in on a daily basis, the only reason for a shortage of aid is when it is stolen by the Hamas terrorist regime.

Frankie Boyle counts the renowned self hating, liberal, extreme left leaning Noam Chomsky as a major influence - “Everybody should read him, and quickly” and another self hater Gilad Atzmon counts himself as big fan of Boyle’s stance.

I do not know much about the documentary that Frankie Boyle saw to convince him that Israel is the enemy but I do believe that when you have an empty hole in your head and you allow it to be filled with the hate spewing bile that comes from a Noam Chomsky book and a likely biased documentary, in addition to being ignorant and not being objective or bothering to find out the whole truth and reasoning behind a story - then of course you’re going to become anti-Israel.

The sad thing is that there are too many people who allow the media to feed them a pile of hate-based lies about Israel and aren’t pro-active enough to find out the truth.

Shame on you Frankie Boyle, but not a surprising outcome.