US comedy film superstar Seth Rogen has sparked controversy by saying that the idea of Israel "makes no sense whatever”. 

Speaking on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast, the Superbad star said that “as a Jewish person,..I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel...You know, they never tell you that […] there were people there. They make it seem like it was just sitting there.”

Aware of the criticism his comments might attract, Mr Maron – who is also Jewish – said “we’re going to piss off a bunch of Jews”, to which Mr Rogen responded: “If anyone can say whatever they f**king want about this s**t, it should be two famous Jewish people.”

He added: “You don’t keep all your Jews in one basket. I don’t understand why they did that. It makes no sense whatever.”

Rogen’s latest flick tells the story of a Jewish immigrant (played by Rogen) in Brooklyn, who falls into a pickling vat and is preserved in brine for 100 years.

During the podcast, the screenwriter and actor spoke about his own Jewish upbringing in New Jersey, including attending Jewish summer camp, which he described as having the goal of getting “young Jewish kids to f**k each other and make more Jews.”

He admitted that it worked, to an extent: though he has no children of his own, his sister met her husband there, and several friends have done similarly.

He claimed he is from a line of “very tough, blue-collar Jews”, much like his character, Herschel, in An American Pickle. Rogen had multiple plumbers in his family, and his grandparents owned a deli.