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Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5586716.ece
The Charities Are Guilty, Not the BBC
[Times-UK] Andrew Roberts - Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, is quite right to refuse to broadcast the appeal of the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) for humanitarian relief for Gaza, but not for the reason he thinks. He is under the impression that it will damage the BBC's reputation for impartiality in reporting the Israel-Palestine question, but the fact is that the BBC does not have any such reputation, having for years been institutionally pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli. The reason that his decision is brave and right, however, is that many of the 13 charities that make up the DEC are even more mired in anti-Israeli assumptions than the BBC itself. The issue of humanitarian relief in this conflict is quite unlike humanitarian relief for victims of a tsunami or a famine. The writer is a British historian.