Letters: Lives in the balance in Gaza

As someone who has spent a good chunk of his life broadcasting to, for and about the Middle East, I have to express outrage at the BBC management's decision not to broadcast the charity appeal for Gaza (BBC refuses airtime to Gaza aid appeal, 23 January). In their ill-considered embargo it appears that Mark Thompson and Caroline Thomson are only thinking of the UK audience and domestic broadcasts.

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Jan. 26/’The hugely successful 1979 appeal for Pol Pot's Cambodia springs to mind as the key precedent. The Biafra and Ethiopian appeals also come to mind as does Somalia and all the DEC appeals for the tiny countries in central America then at the centre of the cold war.’