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.