Very Angry of Tel Aviv

The BBC has followed up last year's refusal to broadcast a humanitarian appeal on behalf of the people of Gaza with another fine bit of abjection. The comedian Frankie Boyle proclaimed on a radio programme that "I've been studying Israeli army martial arts. I now know sixteen 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." Apparently a complaint flooded in and the BBC Trust duly rolled over and sprayed itself with urine. The Trust was particularly exercised over the use of the word "Jew", which implied that Israel was some sort of Jewish state. Of course this misses the point entirely. The real problem with Boyle's joke is the words "very angry", which imply that the occupation of Palestine is essentially the result of genuine human feeling, rather than of military and political calculation hiding behind six million corpses and some estate agent's drivel from the Old Testament.