A recent piece by Ha’aretz’s former editor Hanoch Mamari (“A Fine and Fragile Balance”, April 16th) unintentionally helps explain how much of the Israeli media has become an intolerant ideological mouthpiece for a small and increasingly radical elite.

My recent piece “NPR’s Bias against Israel” demonstrating how National Public Radio repeatedly promoted Arab propaganda line by distorting facts or ignoring them, and drew many responses. Most felt that a warning about NPR’s success in defaming Israel, especially among inexperienced, “idealistic” university students, was long overdue.

But even more instructive, perhaps, were the few angry responses I received from avid NPR listeners who identify strongly with the station’s message and who are convinced that NPR stance against Israel is justified.

The BBC is at the forefront of the anti-Israel media pack in Europe. It has been so effective in smearing Israel as a rogue state that in a recent poll, Europeans rated Israel as more dangerous to world peace than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or Iran or North Korea.

In a recent European poll, Israel was chosen as the state most dangerous to world peace. Those who wonder why need only read or watch the European media.

For example, the BBC’s recent film “Israel’s Secret Weapons”, part of an effort to delegitimize Bush’s invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, intimates that the US should focus instead on disarming Israel.

After careful examination of the record, several media analysts have concluded that many among the foreign media, especially in CNN and the BBC, are actively engaged in a propaganda war designed to delegitimize Israel.

This is a harsh conclusion, but it is obvious that these media mandarins are promoting the Arab propaganda line that Israel is a colonialist power with few legitimate rights to the land, and that it willfully kills innocent Arabs, even children.