Bob The Builder Named In Settlement Construction Probe

The allegations may adversely affect the new animated series of Mr. the Builder’s chronicles.

Tel Aviv, May 3 – Anti-settlement activists are accusing a prominent international entertainer of actively working on homes for Israeli Jews in areas Palestinians claim for a future state, a spokesman for the activists said today.

Peace Now representative Ray Kingball announced this morning that an investigation by the organization points to Bob the Builder as taking an active part in the expansion of Jewish communities beyond the Green Line, which marked the cease-fire between Israeli and Jordanian forces in 1949. The allegations indicate further trouble for Mr. the Builder, whose rebooted television series last year received mixed reviews and angered fans of the original stop-motion animation oeuvre.

“We have incontrovertible evidence that Bob the Builder, Wendy, and their team of anthropomorphised construction and digging equipment have been participating in the development of new housing for Israelis in occupied Palestinian territory,” declared Kingball. “In the name of all people working for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, we demand that Mr. the Builder stop these activities at once, as they are not constructive.”

“Failing that,” continued Kingball, “we will urge contractors and consumers of Mr. the Builder’s services to boycott them.”

If it results in significant publicity, the allegations may adversely affect the new animated series of Mr. the Builder’s chronicles. “People are already upset that the cast, voices, and look of the operation have changed so much since the original,” explained media expert Anna Littix. “If word of these projects in Israeli settlements attracts additional criticism from fans on the fence about the new series, it could spell doom for the reboot.” Littix added that the situation has more complexity than that, however, since some of the cast from the original series has been spotted digging on hillsides outside Jerusalem for a new neighborhood of the Givat Zeev settlement, indicating that it will be difficult to find significant overlap between opponents of the new series and opponents of Jewish settlement beyond the 1949 armistice lines.

A spokesman for the TV personality was quick to dismiss the accusations. “Peace Now is just looking for ways to stay in the headlines as its pipe-dream of a land-for-peace deal gets proven impossible by the day,” said Scoop, a backhoe. “It’s become clearer and clearer since Oslo that the problem isn’t any so-called Occupation, but the simple unwillingness of the Palestinians in general, and the Muslim world at large, to tolerate Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland. The question Mr. Kingball and his organization should be asking themselves is, ‘Given that our worldview is so out-of-touch with reality, at this stage of the game, can we fix it?”

An unnamed source in Mr. the Builder’s entourage said on condition of anonymity that Mr. the Builder decided to support the settlement enterprise, in opposition to longstanding American policy, after US President Barack Obama used Bob the Builder’s “Yes we can!” mantra in his 2008 election campaign without proper attribution or compensation.