Frankie Boyle - no stranger to controversy with his briefly-funny-but-becoming-tiresome brand of shock humour - is in the headlines after claiming that Israel is a terrorist state in a response to the BBC's decision to apologise for a joke the Scottish comedian made in which he claimed to be learning an Israeli martial art - "I know sixteen ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back," he said.
In his response, he states that "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." He also mentioned the BBC 2009 decision not to broadcast a humanitarian appeal aimed at helping the people of Gaza, which in the Corporation's opinion was sufficiently biased towards the anti-Israel movement that broadcast contravened the strict impartiality clause that makes up an important part of its mandate, claiming that the BBC is "now cravenly afraid of giving offence and vulnerable to any kind of well drilled lobbying."
The full letter can be read here.
The joke ended with Boyle saying, "I've got an analogy which explains the whole thing quite well: if you imagine that Palestine is a cake – well, that cake is being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew."
That would be worth something, Frankie, only if the cake regularly fired explosive candles into towns inhabited by unarmed civilians and taught its little cupcakes that all Jews are evil and should be destroyed by any means possible, including blowing yourself up. You said that "People think that the Middle East is very complex" - that's because it is. It's much more complex than your analogy suggests, and when it comes to Israel and Palestine neither side is as pure as the driven snow. Some people, put off by the complexity of the matter, base their opinions on what the people the see on the telly have to say about it, and your comments - which suggest that the Palestinians would be perfectly fine if it wasn't for those nasty, vicious Jews attacking them - really don't help one bit. In fact, it even risks stirring up Jew-hatred; and I'm sure you wouldn't want anyone to label you an antisemite, would you? While your brand of humour doesn't require any in-depth research, make sure you have at least some idea of what you're talking about. You look like an idiot otherwise.