OUTRAGED members of the public piled pressure on British venues yesterday to boycott US celebrity Joan Rivers’s autumn tour after she said Palestinians killed in Gaza “deserve to be dead.”

Organisers of a Change.org petition backed by NGO Friends of Al Aqsa demanded that the alleged comedian be boycotted and branded her comments “hate speech” illegal under domestic law.

Backing for the campaign against Ms Rivers mushroomed yesterday with over 20,000 people declaring: “You are not welcome to our towns and cities.”

Petition organiser Dipu Ahad said that focus would now turn on the venues hosting her tour, which begins at the New Theatre, Oxford, on October 8.

Ms Rivers caused outrage with an astonishing rant at the height of Israel’s bloody assault on the Gaza Strip declaring that those killed “were told to get out. They didn’t get out.

“You don’t get out, you are an idiot. At least the ones that were killed were the ones with low IQs.”