RUTHFULLY YOURS

Now, there are two substantive elements to this story: Frankie Boyle’s views on Israel and the Jews; and the nature of the BBC’s response to them which came last week. First Boyle’s views on Israel and the Jews. I will let him speak for himself.

This is another remark he made during the same show which was first broadcast in 2008: “‘I’ve been studying Israeli Army martial arts. I now know 16 ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back.” And here is a selection of remarks he made in an open letter to the BBC published yesterday in which he protests against the BBC Trust’s apology (more about which in a moment) for his use of the word Jew.

“I think the problem here,” he said, “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.”

And:

“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.”

And:

“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.”

And:

“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’.

“I cried at that and promised myself that I would do something. Other than write a few stupid jokes I have not done anything. Neither have you.”

So, to sum up he regards Israel as a racist, genocidal, terroristic pariah and thinks there is a moral imperative to become an activist against it. In the context of a complaint made by a single listener, he is also convinced that the BBC is cowering before a “well drilled” Zionist lobby. Overall then, he’s pretty much the complete neo-anti-Semitic bigot with that particular form of Judeophobic bigotry being buttressed in his “angry Jew” remarks by a rather older form of anti-Semitism to boot.

But much more important is to recognise the emotional condition which his bigotry drives him to. Anti-Israeli propaganda actually makes him cry. Just stop and think about that. No really, stop and think about that, and try to visualise the scene with him sitting in front of his TV set and watching a mainstream British documentary about Israel that literally moves him to tears.

That is what I mean when I talk about the anti-Israeli agenda in Britain having the character of a group hysteria. Boyle’s attitude and behaviour is simply inaccessible to reason since it is not his rational faculties that are driving him. He, like the agenda which has consumed him, is out of control.

So what of the BBC and its response to this man? The BBC’s response, of course, was to his initial remarks in which he referred to the Israeli army kicking women in the back and to the “angry Jew” destroying Palestine.

Referring to the latter but not the former the BBC Trust’s editorial standards committee said the remark was “inappropriate and offensive”. It made its complaint more specific by making it clear that what was really wrong with Boyle’s comments was his inappropriate use of the word “Jew”.

“As a result,” the BBC said, “the committee wished to apologise to the complainant on behalf of the BBC for any offence the remark may have caused him and other listeners to the programme.”

The BBC added that “it was very sorry that the breach of editorial standards had occurred in this case, but was satisfied that no further action was required.”

No further action? If he had made similarly contemptuous remarks about black people he’d never be allowed on the BBC or any other mainstream broadcast outlet again. If he’d said something unpleasant about the Prophet Mohammed he’d be risking his life. And in modern Britain that is how the hierarchy of
values breaks down.

But there is one more thing to say about this affair, and it may be the most important. Did you notice what was identified by the BBC as Boyle’s real offence? It was his use of the word “Jew”. If he’d said “Israeli” — as he did in the back kicking joke — or if he’d said “Zionist” there wouldn’t have been a problem. In other words, it was not Boyle’s mentality — the entire bigoted edifice of hatred for the people of the State of Israel — that bothered them so much as his tactical ineptitude.

He broke the cardinal rule of the neo-anti-Semitic agenda: bigotry is acceptable if it is against “Israelis” and “Zionists”; it is unacceptable, because it is embarrassing in post-Holocaust Europe, if it is openly disdainful of Jews per se.

The mask slipped, and the BBC has told Boyle to put it back on again. As long as he does that he will be safe and secure inside an environment where the substance of his views is now considered normal. Welcome to the extremist mainstream, but remember one thing: don’t mention the “Jews”.