Irish TV star 'got death threats' after hosting event for Israel
Actor Rory Cowan says he was target of campaign to sack him from hit show 'Mrs. Brown's Boys,' was most bothered by anti-Semitic remarks.
The star of popular British comedy "Mrs. Bown's Boys" says he received death threats after a video of him hosting an Israeli embassy event went viral.
Rory Cowan, who plays Rory Brown, told Irish newspaper the Evening Herald that anti-Israel activists had even tried to have him fired from his job on the hit BBC show, in which he plays the son of the eponymous Mrs. Brown, in turn played by comedian and Cowan's close friend Brendan O'Carroll.
"I've had death threats," Cowan told the Herald. "There's been a campaign to get me replaced in Mrs Brown's Boys."
He said that the 2013 video of him hosting an event at the Israeli embassy for the country's 65th anniversary was uploaded to the internet and went viral, as did the attacks against him.
"People took that video and they said, 'Well, look, he's standing with Israel, he's supporting genocide and the killing of children'", Cowan told the Herald. "And with that it just came from everywhere."
Cowan also hit back at the movement to boycott Israel, which has found a foothold in Northern Ireland.
"I love going to Israel," he told the paper. "I've been going since 1982 and I was telling them about my good experiences there and why I wouldn't be boycotting it."
Cowan also vowed that the onslaught would not adversely affect him.
"You can't take that on board. I don't know who these people are. If I did I'd be scared to go outside my house," he said. "The one thing that really bothered me were the anti-Semitic comments."
The show, which chronicles the lives of a family in the Republic of Ireland, has found popularity in the UK and abroad, and is aired in Australia, Canada, Denmark and the US, among others.
