Melanie Phillips has a superb post, wrapping up two examples of what passes today for BBC analysis (by Ed Stourton and - him again - Jeremy Bowen) and a vile piece in yesterday's Guardian by Geoffrey Wheatcroft:

Stourton assumed that Israel’s attempt to defend itself against that aggression was illegitimate — and that no reasonable person could disagree. He asked the former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, why the Americans and the British had not supported the international calls for an immediate cease-fire.

...ES: Your former UN colleague the Syrian ambassador said to us that America was deliberately frustrating diplomatic attempts during those last two weeks of July precisely so Israel could have its head. From what you have just said, that’s a fair analysis of what was happening.

JB: I was damn proud of what we did.

Bolton was reacting to this line of questioning just as any normal person with a sense of justice would react. Faced with the proposition that a country had finally attempted to defend itself against an enemy which had constantly waged war against it, and that it did so by trying to destroy that enemy, he asked: ‘What was wrong with that?’ And of course, to a normal person there’s not only nothing wrong with it but it is the right and moral thing to do, to protect one’s country against further attack by attempting to destroy the enemy.

But in the twisted world of BBC values, it appears, Israel has no right to defend itself. Because when Stourton says the US and UK refused to call for a ceasefire, that’s not quite correct. They actually called upon Hezbollah from the start to stop its aggression. What Stourton — and the UK media and Labour party — found so unacceptable was that Bush and Blair didn’t insist that Israel should stop defending itself. In other words, that they did not insist that Israel surrender. And surrender, what’s more, to an army of Iran which has declared not only its intention to wipe Israel off the map but also to destroy the west and conquer the Arab world too.

Which is why Stourton goes on to report — in apparent amazement — that the Arab world was secretly hoping that Israel would indeed crush Hezbollah. Because the Arab world has every interest in Iran being defeated —as does the west, as do Bush and Blair and as do all sane and sentient people. That’s why it was in everyone’s interests for Israel to be allowed to defend itself by destroying its Iranian enemy before that enemy destroyed it. That’s why the US and the Arab world were so put out when Israel failed to destroy it.

But astoundingly, the BBC and the British left and a considerable proportion of the rest of Britain thinks the real problem was not Iranian aggression but that Israel might actually have defeated the army of Iran. They find it simply unconscionable that Israel was not required to surrender. According to Stourton, it is apparently a scandal that the US supported Israel in its self-defence; indeed, he represents this as some kind of sinister conspiracy that he has now unearthed through his amazing journalistic acumen. Democratic allies supporting each other in the great fight against fascism! What an outrage!

As for Wheatcroft's rant: let's just say it trots out pretty much every classic antisemitic theme going. As Melanie puts it:

Wheatcroft’s final charge, that British foreign policy is based on the interest of ‘another country’ —by which he presumably meant Israel — is simply contemptible. Once again, it is astonishing that this kind of sub-Protocols of the Elders of Zion racial libel about the Jews being a sinister conspiracy to subvert the foreign policy of Britain against the national interest is published in a mainstream British newspaper.

Indeed, it more or less proves my point in my Telegpraph piece below, prompting comments such as this on the Guardian site:

Jews in the UK are not normal people, they are Anglo-Jewish, and their loyalty to the UK is in question. No matter how many generations or centuries they have been in England, they are still outsiders.

Do read Melanie's full piece.