The BBC was absolutely right about the unbalanced Gaza charity ad

The Corporation has performed admirably during the conflict, says Rod Liddle. It is to Mark Thompson’s credit that he did not cave in to pressure on all sides to air the charity appeal

Forgive me for turning into Dr Pangloss all of a sudden, but doesn’t the furore created over the BBC’s decision not to run the film begging for charitable donations for Gaza sort of justify its original decision, at least in part?

The most voluble protestors have been drawn, in the main, from the anti-Israeli far left. On the radio phone-in shows the many callers demanding the BBC reverse its decision almost always gave the game away by screeching, at some point, ‘Genocide!’ and ‘Zionist oppressors!’, sort of involuntarily, rather in the manner of Dr Strangelove. George Galloway, with whom I was privileged to ‘debate’ the issue (there is no debate, of course), asserted that the BBC had shown long-standing and extreme pro-Israeli bias. Is it even remotely possible to believe such a thing without being quite mad? I also failed to debate the issue with a magnificently sententious and totalitarian Tony Benn (he wouldn’t debate with a hapless Zionist twat like me), who resorted to telling the interviewer that he made him puke, simply for asking a few salient questions. To be sure, there have been representations from a few clerics and front-bench politicians — but the majority of those making the noise are those possessed of a certain view of Israel, a certain view of Palestine. One shared by the PLO or Hamas, for the most part.

Meanwhile, from the pro-Israeli right the decision has been defended, but only up to a point. Melanie Phillips said that it was right that the film shouldn’t be shown but that the BBC continued to spray out pro-Palestinian propaganda whenever it covered the whole issue.