American comedian Reginald D. Hunter made an anti-Israel comment during a stand-up show in Edinburgh, UK, sparking a show of anti-Israel sentiment from the audience and animosity towards an Israeli couple who held front-row tickets, The Telegraph‘s Dominic Cavendish reported.
At the Sunday night performance, Hunter compared a scene in a documentary about an abusive wife claiming her husband was abusive to Israel’s self-defense in its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Commenting on the documentary scene, Hunter said, “My God, it’s like being married to Israel.” Some in the audience laughed at the remark, but a couple in the front row, who said they were from Israel, shouted, “Not funny.”
According to Cavendish, upon hearing the Israeli couple’s response, others in the audience began shouting expletives, telling them to go, and shouting, “genocidal maniac,” “you’re not welcome,” and, “free Palestine.”
Hunter then turned to the couple himself, saying, “I’ve been waiting for you all summer, where the f— you been? You can say it’s not funny to you, but if you say it to a room full of people who laughed, you look foolish.”
After the woman remonstrated with the audience, he added, “Look at you making everyone love Israel even more.”
After the couple left, with Hunter laughing at them as they made their slow – due to the husband’s disability – exit, he turned to the rest of the audience, saying, “That tells me that I still got voltage.”
Cavendish noted that Hunter then recalled to the audience a remark that his partner made during controversy about accessing the Jewish Chronicle‘s website: “Typical f—ing Jews, they won’t tell you anything unless you subscribe.” But he added, “It’s just a joke.”