‘Jew haters!’ Steve Coogan and celebrities condemned for signing letter for Palestine – ‘Educate yourself’

However, David Mencer, an expert on the Middle East and former director of Labour Friends of Israel pointed out that the group failed to condemn Hamas’s terror attack, instead focusing on Israel's military action in Gaza.

“I'm speaking to you live from Tel Aviv,” Mencer said, “and I think the perspective from here right now is to me, it looks like you've got to be a special kind of Jew hater to sign this sort of drivel.”

He added: “This letter is so misguided and misplaced, I simply say to this group of misfits and weirdos, that I invite them to rescue their alien careers and try their chances as artists in Gaza under the Hamas regime.

“You know, if they do that, I promise to sign a letter when they are locked up by Hamas.

“They'd be lucky if they're locked up because they'd be most likely, judging from Hamas record, have their throats cut.

When asked by GB News host Patrick Christys whether those who signed the letters “don't understand the problem” or had an “undertone of antisemitism”, Mencer said: “These are special kinds of Jew haters.”

“We can't anymore just forgive people for being ignorant.”

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Notable signatures on the letter included Charles Dance, Frankie Boyle, Josie Long, Maxine Peake, Peter Mullan, Tilda Swinton and hundreds more.

When asked if he had a message for Coogan, Swinton and the other celebrities, Mencer said his advice would be for them to “educate themselves”.

“I would say that it would be a great idea if you took a little trip down to Hamas and educated yourself into the Gaza Strip and see what it's like for artists trying to, you know, perhaps give over any sort of opposition from the genocide or Islamic under all this regime.

“Now just educate yourself. Go and visit and then come over to Israel and see the flourishing democratic scene which exists here in Israel and compare the two and then I make a decision about where you'd rather live.

“But that is being too kind to them because I have had enough of this idea about, ‘Oh well, people are misinformed’, this is not misinformed. It has been a genocide, the most appalling act of humanity.”

The open letter came after supplies of water, power, food and medicine to 2.3 million Palestinians were cut off.

Tens of thousands of IDF troops have also positioned themselves on the border with Gaza ahead of a suspected land assault.