Foreign visitors to England are generally impressed not only by Buckingham Palace and buttery scones, but also by the high quality of British television. In-depth, non-commercial TV in the UK is enabled primarily by massive public funding of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which receives about £3  billion ($5.5 billion) in public tax money a year. The BBC's highly influential international branch ― BBC World Service ― draws from these funds to bring their programming to no less than 152 countries worldwide.

The generous BBC budget and lack of commercial pressure allow it to broadcast one type of content ― documentary films ― that has unique potential to add quality context to day-to-day news.

But a new, in-depth study released by London attorney Trevor Asserson's bbcwatch indicates that the BBC has used their documentary films on world events not to provide essential, impartial news context, but rather as a platform for an unremitting ideological mission: 'a campaign to vilify Israel.'

Of the seventeen documentary programs the BBC produced on Israel over the past four years, only one presented Israel in a positive light; the other sixteen were overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian, casting Israel as a brutal aggressor nation.

These programs are generally well-advertised several days beforehand, and are typically broadcast at peak viewing times. Here are just a few of the anti-Israel documentaries aired by the BBC recently, with bbcwatch's comments:

● The Ugly War: Children of Vengeance (2/24/02) : The hidden world of Palestinian terrorists (referred to throughout as 'militias' and 'martyrs'). "Terrorist bombings of Israeli civilians are painted as an entirely legitimate activity, almost heroic."

●  Israel's Secret Weapon (4/30/03) : Looks at the build-up of Israel's nuclear weapons program. The documentary begins by asking the ominous questions "Which country in the Middle East has undeclared nuclear weapons?" "Which country in the Middle East has undeclared biological and chemical capabilities?" and "Which country in the Middle East has no outside inspections?" (see BBC promo at right)

The documentary was broadcast shortly after the Iraq war had ended. "The inference behind these opening remarks, which is repeated throughout the film, is that Israel would have been a more appropriate target than Iraq for the coalition forces to attack."

● Suicide Killers: Everyman (4/3/02) : The psychology and ideology of the suicide bomber worldwide. "One is made to feel sorry for and sympathetic with the Palestinian suicide bomber who says he 'loved life and wanted to be a doctor. Occupation has murdered my dreams.'"

● The War Party (5/18/03) : A group of conservative Washington politicians ― the 'neocons' ―are depicted as dangerous or even evil. "This is a highly sensitive issue," the narrator says, but "the majority of neo-conservatives have been and remain Jewish...are strongly pro-Zionist and want to topple regimes in the Middle East to help Israel..." Says bbcwatch, "It is hard to find clear blue water between these theories and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

● Days That Shook the World: Birth of Israel (1/28/04) : History of the birth of Israel, told partially through the eyes of an imaginary pair of Palestinian brothers. Presents "the fundamental unfairness underpinning the existence of the Jewish state. It is suggested that the Jews wish to expel all the Palestinians," conveniently ignoring the fact that the Jews accepted the 1947 UN partition plan, while the Arabs rejected it.

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As continually noted by HonestReporting (and by journalist Tom Gross in a recent article), these BBC documentaries are part of a deep-seated, institutional anti-Israel bias, a culture that drove the senior BBC Arabic Service correspondent in Gaza, Fayad Abu Shamala, to announce at a Hamas rally in May 2001 that journalists and media organizations, including the BBC, are "waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people."

Indeed, the bbcwatch report found that despite the BBC's legal obligation from its charter to "provide a properly balanced service consisting of a wide range of subject matter," ensuring that "no significant strand of thought should go unreflected or underrepresented," the BBC actually devotes a highly disproportionate amount of space to the Israeli/Palestinian in general, and to the Palestinian point-of-view in particular. This further strengthens what viewers sense from any documentary on its own ― the BBC has an overriding, active agenda to indict Israel not only for local problems, but for much of the world's ills.

Moreover, the reputation and broad reach of the BBC ensure the immense and potentially dangerous influence of its material, fanning the flames of worldwide anti-Semitism. Reports bbcwatch: "It is not fanciful to contemplate that, by portraying Israel in an unnecessarily negative light, the BBC might itself unwittingly encourage aggression not only against Israelis, but also against UK Jewish citizens."