Apparently callers to the BBC's complaint line are being greeted with the recorded message;

"If you wish to complain about the BBC's decision not to air the DEC's Gaza appeal please press 1." That is if the call at a time when the volume of complaints isn't so large that it has overwhelmed the switchboard leaving callers with nothing more then an engaged tone.

As for the appeal itself the other four terrestrial TV channels have broken with 46 years of tradition and will broadcast the two minute appeal on Monday without a consensus being reached. The BBC however are still pretending to stay strong in the face of political lobbying by refusing to broadcast the appeal. They are justify this decision by arguing that;

"We could not broadcast a free-standing appeal, no matter how carefully constructed, without running the risk of reducing public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in its wider coverage of the story. Inevitably an appeal would use pictures which are the same or similar to those we would be using in our news programmes."

This argument would of course have more credibility if the same editorial guidelines had been applied to the BBC's decision to air a new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank while Israel's campaign in Gaza was at its peak. For those of you unfamiliar with the work it tells of the experiences of a teenage Jewish girl who, with her family, was forced into hiding after the Nazi occupation of Holland. Most people will know the story well because the book or the multiple adaptations to both stage and screen have long been heralded as an excellent way to introduce people to the Jewish experience of world war two through an enigmatic central character. It is one of the best and most famous examples of what the Israeli government have taken to calling "atrocity propaganda."
The five, 1 hour episodes of the series were aired on BBC1 in the 7pm time slot, straight after the evening news.

While this level of pro-Israeli bias in the BBC's reporting is shocking it is sadly not in anyway surprising. You see any journalist or news organisation (Israeli's included) who has the audacity to report on middle eastern affairs let alone question Israel's self-appointed right to kill as many Palestinians as they like soon come under the scrutiny of groups such as;

The Israel Project who describe themselves as a "trusted" non-governmental organisation based in Jerusalem dedicated to educating the press and the public about Israel. They provide reporters with all the information an motivation they will need to make sure Israel's point of view on any issue is well represented.

Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America who recruit and train local activists to monitor coverage of Arab/Israeli affairs and lobby media news outlets who they feel are being less then accurate in their reporting. Examples of corrections their activists have "won" are listed on their website including an incident where the New York Times ran a photograph of an Israeli child fleeing her home in Sedrot alongside the caption;

"Bat El Ifrah, 10, removed articles on Wednesday from her home in Sderot, Israel, as her family prepared to flee...Two children on a playground near the Gaza border were also wounded in the attack, which was in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza that killed seven Hamas policemen."

CAMERA activists had this "corrected" to read;

"A caption on Thursday with a photograph of a home in Israel hit by a Palestinian rocket described the events surrounding the attack imprecisely. While the rocket attack followed an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza, it was not known whether it was in fact in retaliation for the airstrike."

This "correction" is in itself incorrect because the only reason we know the rocket attack was carried out by Hamas is because they issued a claim of responsibility in which they clearly stated it was a retaliation for the Israeli airstrike.

More worryingly was the incident where CNN ran an article featuring the phrase;

"Israel at 60 is a place where creativity flourishes but where Palestinians are not allowed on West Bank roads reserved for Jews."

Which the self-appointed media monitors had changed to read;

"Israel at 60 is a place where creativity flourishes but where Palestinians are not allowed on West Bank roads reserved for Israelis."

This correction is particularly disturbing because Israel always asserts that Arab's in Israel enjoy full and equal democratic rights. For the campaign to get a distinction between Arab-Israelis and Jewish-Israelis changed to a distinction between Israeli's and non-Israelis would suggest that CAMERA doesn't believe that Arabs qualify a full Israelis.

Meanwhile in Israel itself the BBC seem to have been singled out for special attention for a perceived pro-Palestinian bias in their reporting of the most recent Gaza conflict. Some members of Israel's security services (Mossad) have even gone so far as to accuse the BBC of providing Hamas with material support as a form of ransom payment for the safe return of BBC journalist Alan Johnston. During the last week Eretz Nehaderet, an Israeli TV show, featured a Saturday Night Live style skit openly mocking BBC's reporters for showing a pro-Palestinian bias although this video has mysteriously disappeared from Youtube. So severe is Israels criticism of the BBC the situation looks like reaching the proportions of the incident in 2003 which followed the BBC's airing of a documentary entitled; Israel's Secret Weapons. This well researched and factually accurate documentary revealed that in spite of Israels refusal to sign up to Nuclear non-proliferation treaties and it's repeated calls that action needed to be taken against Iran "to prevent a nuclear Middle East" Israel itself was in possession of a full and functioning secret nuclear weapons program which is large enough to rival the nuclear arsenals of Britain or France. Israel's response to this program was to break off all contact with the BBC before arresting and expelling a BBC journalist for conspiring against the Israeli government, a move which puts Israel in a select group of paranoid and totalitarian regimes including Burma and North Korea.

With this level of animosity between the Israeli government and the BBC I can't help but thinking all those who are complaining about the BBC's DEC decision are simply doing Israels dirty work for them. Perhaps some of them may wish to contact the Israeli embassy to discuss the matter further.