Many believe that by adopting an anti-American and anti-Zionist line, the BBC has made a serious error in judgement, possibly rivaling the one that the broadcast ministry made about Fascism prior to World War II. At the time, BBC chief John Reith supported the Chamberlain government's strategy of accomodating Hitler - who Reith admired - and saw to it that the "anti-peace", "hardliner" Winston Churchill would not have access to the British airwaves. By the time it was realized that the Germans could not be appeased and that Churchill had been right all along, the fate of the British Empire was all but sealed. It is regrettable that today's pro-terror BBC seems not to have learned anything from the experience.

Americans, Israelis and citizens of other affected democracies can join the protest against the BBC in a number of ways: tourists can stay away from the UK this summer; investors can divest their interests in British companies; cable operators can extricate themselves from existing carriage arrangements and break-off negotiations on renewals; and employees of the BBC can resign in protest.

It would be a mistake to view Britons as uniformly supportive of the BBC. In fact, many are now calling for the corporation's retirement or reform. Whatever their concerns about the Iraq War, the Kyoto Protocol, or the Arab war on Israel, these Britons appreciate the critical role that the Americans and the Jews have played in defending freedom. They realize that between the Bible and the blood of America's sons and daughters, the British debt to these two nations is substantial. Indeed, they wonder why the BBC would try to delegitimize the land in whose image Britain was created, remembering that as far back as the seventeenth century their forebears envisioned England as the "Second Israel" and sought to model their institutions upon those of the "Hebrew Republic" (see Judaism and Enlightenment by Adam Sutcliffe, Cambridge University Press, 2003.) They remind us that it is a British tradition to sing the patriotic hymn "Jerusalem" each year at "The Proms" and note that their beloved anthem closes with the dream of building Jerusalem "in England's green and pleasant land." In reply to anyone who questions whether the Jews are "entitled" to their own nation, these true-hearted Britons answer that it was the Jews that supplied the world with the most enduring and inspiring national model - the nation under God. If not the Jews, they ask, then who? These Britons remember what was required for Britain to roll back the Hun and the Bear, and they understand that their security could again come down to the willingness of other freedom loving peoples to stand by them.

[Update: The BBC just released the findings of its own, post-Hutton internal review.]

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