A promotional image for Russell Brand's new comedy tour. Photo: RussellBrand.tv.

English actor Russell Brand criticized Israel and defended the actions of Hamas recently, in two videos posted online. His comments came in response to Fox News anchor, Sean Hannity, admonishing a pro-Palestinian guest, Yousef Munayyer, who refused to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Brand criticized Hannity as “childish” for pushing Munayyer and said the following:

In a dispute the side with inferior resources has to use more desperate tactics … big countries like Britain or America or Israel have proper militaries, have proper military resources … Gaza strip they don’t have an army … so if they are in any way going to try and defend themselves it is going to be through what we would perceive or term as acts of terror, but that is just language really.

Brand also referred to Hamas rocket attacks against Israel as “pin pricks” and mocked Hannity. The actor claimed that the people of Gaza don’t have much power and that they have “a little network of tunnels and a few puny rockets”.

Brand later added:

They are not using children as human shields. … Those children are dying because missiles are going off all over the place and Gaza is a little tiny area… the key ingredient in the death of those children is the missile, not using them as shields, which I don’t think happens, that’s dehumanization … Some would consider the arming of Israel, the constant bombardment, the murder of children to be terrorist.

Days later, Hannity responded on his own show by pointing out that 3000 rockets had been fired into Israel and two-thirds of the Israeli population are hiding in bomb shelters. The Fox News anchor also displayed the Hamas charter which explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel.

In a second follow up video Brand said “remember that Hamas probably are defending the idea of the territory that existed before Israel was placed on top of where they live, they are probably really angry.” He claimed that no one in Gaza is using women and children as human shields, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Brand also asserted that Israel is keeping the Gaza population on the brink of poverty by controlling their calorie intake.