The report this evening on the Prime Minister's visit to the Middle East by the BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr, on TV's Six o'Clock News, along with his exclusive interview with Tony Blair on BBC TV's News 24, was yet another dispiriting example of the prejudice that infests BBC coverage of this issue. Marr's report was almost entirely presented from the standpoint of the Palestinians. True, the Palestinians were the story, since Tony Blair's planned London conference will feature them alone (although Blair strangely referred to both sides coming to the conference -- is he really so detached from reality?). But Marr's report was based on the premise that the Palestinians were the victims in the Middle East drama, that all they wanted was a 'country of their own', and that Ariel Sharon's motives should be regarded with deep suspicion -- while the Palestinians' good faith was not even questioned.

Thus he referred to the 'quarter of a million Palestinians caught inside Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem', posed by a bit of the security fence that looks like a wall rather than the far less awful-looking wire barrier that comprises most of it, and asked emotively whether the Palestinians would 'ever have a proper country'. He did not refer to the fact that they were offered a proper country in 1947 and in 2000 but responded by trying to exterminate Israel. Nor did he refer (apart from a glancing and impatient reference to Israel only wanting to talk about terrorism while the Palestinians only want to talk about land) to the savage war waged on Israel which necessitated the barrier (whose route has now been modified to take in less Palestinian land as a result of a ruling by the Israel supreme court -- not that that is ever mentioned either) and the number of Israeli victims of terrorist atrocities which, if translated into British population terms, is the equivalent of about 70,000 casualties in four years. In his interview with Blair, he asked instead whether he was absolutely sure that Sharon would pull out of Gaza and give the Palestinians 'a real country'. He did not ask whether Blair was absolutely sure of the Palestinians' good faith since they are still refusing to disband their own terrorist militias, let alone take on Hamas (something Mahmoud Abbas has always said he refuses to do since he will not entertain the prospect of civil war) and which surely any fair-minded person would think is somewhat important if the 'peace process' is to be 'got back on track'.

In short, even-handed this was not. Most people who are ignorant of the situation in the Middle East (which is most people) and who watched those items would be confirmed once again in their BBC-induced view that that dispute is over a Palestinian state and Israel's obduracy in not allowing it. One more contribution by the BBC, in other words, to the frightening ignorance and prejudice now stalking the nation.