Finally, I gave in and watched Da Ali G Show on HBO. My neighbors kept telling me he is "so funny" and though he comes in many disguises, he is really Jewish, a Jewish comedic genius from the UK. His real name is Sacha Baron Cohen, so he must be, you know, Jewish.

I missed his first season. So, a few weeks back, I caught him for his second go. I came, I saw, and was not impressed. Not funny. In fact, insulting.

When did Jew-bashing become so stylish?

Altogether, in fact, I am starting to have problems with HBO, which bills itself as: "It's Not Television. It's HBO." I like it for the boxing, for Curb and for the new movie it puts on once every six months. Otherwise it's mostly repeats. So it is television, and lately, bad television.

For some time, HBO was an alternative, a sanctuary, a refuge from the wasteland of regular TV. I knew I was in trouble when I started getting confused as to who may or may not have murdered his wife, Scott Peterson or Muqtada Al-Sadr? That's what you get from watching too much cable news.

So here I am, watching Ali G, and I am trying to laugh, but it is not happening. The skit where he's performing as a clueless hip-hop journalist, this I give a three out of a possible 10. But moving along, here we are at the final segment where he's playing the ultimate East European square from Kazakhstan.

He's like one of those "wild and crazy guys" that worked so well on Saturday Night Live. That's the character he's using, and in this skit - which he plays for keeps - he's at some bar somewhere down South, up on stage, singing before an audience that's half amused and half drunk.

But it's more than that. Am I hearing this right? The words go something like this - "Throw the Jews down the well." That's not it exactly, but pretty near, and he's demanding that the audience join in, yes, sing along. Because he's (supposedly) Jewish, does this make it kosher? I don't think so.

I am told that this is cutting edge, just like the rest of Ali G, and HBO. Oh really. Cutting edge is when you pick on a group that's never been picked on before.

Picking on the Jews, why, is there any sport more popular than that these days? It's everywhere.

All that only made things worse in my "relationship" with HBO. A couple of weeks earlier, I was on the phone with French filmmaker Pierre Rehov when a promo appeared on HBO for something called Death in Gaza. This trailer made it plain that, here we go again, it's another Israel-bashing number.

James Miller turned out Death In Gaza and was killed before he could tell the Israeli side of the story, if he intended to do so in the first place.

But half a (poisoned) loaf is apparently good enough for HBO.

Rehov was in New York at the time, meeting with Israeli Cabinet Minister Natan Sharansky. I told Rehov to "use" Sharansky. If Sharansky can get out of the Gulag, which he did, he can get into HBO, which I don't think he did. I'm not sure if Sharansky even tried, for lack of time, but the effort had to and has to be made for the sake of fairness.

Of course, you never heard of Pierre Rehov. That's because he makes documentaries that are actually balanced, and even show Israelis in a good light; so naturally, he can't find a distributor. He's made six of these and right now he's in Israel making his seventh. He's already debunked Jenin, Jenin, with his much more truthful The Road to Jenin. I've seen the tape and it's terrific; as is The Silent Exodus, about the Jews who were trapped in Arab lands during Israel's War of Independence.

In his other documentaries, Rehov demonstrates how our version of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has been corrupted by the Arab use of reporters as propagandists. So much of what we're shown is staged, as that Mohammed Al-Dura incident, a set-up from the word go, but which sparked this nearly four-year Palestinian temper tantrum.

Rehov, who's been there and done that, told me that he knows the people who made Death In Gaza, and the rest of them that make such "documentaries". It is always about passing off propaganda as news by reporters who are on the Arab side to begin with, or Westerners who are intimidated, threatened with death, if they fail to heed Yasser Arafat's editorial point of view.

Writer Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D., has taken up the cause for Rehov. She's the author of 12 books, most recently, The New Anti-Semitism, so maybe she has some pull with HBO. She's asking the Mr. Bigs over there to use at least one of Rehov's documentaries as a counterpoint. She hasn't heard back yet, and let's hope the decision is not buried six feet under.

As for Death In Gaza - I'm skipping. I know what's coming, as I know what's coming when Vanessa Redgrave opens up. I've been around. I've seen plenty. As I wrote recently, the label is enough.

The label for Death In Gaza says, "Not Kosher!"

P.S. Okay, I watched it, and it's worse than I expected. You don't have to be a lover of Israel, only a lover of truth, to know when you've been had. For those who missed it, allow me to sum it all up in the words of one Palestinian Arab child: "Jews are sons of dogs." Maybe Ali G can turn that into a sing-along for his next outing on HBO.

I said that HBO is repeat city, so if you missed the slander against Israel the first time, it keeps on being repeated on HBO's sister stations.

One more thing: If it's true that Miller was shot by Israeli gunfire, even after he and his crew identified themselves as journalists, it must first be noted that this happened in the fog of war, and second, terrorists now routinely camouflage themselves as members of the press.

And another thing: I've just checked with Dr. Chesler. She is carrying Rehov's documentaries on her web site www.phyllis-chesler.com, and through that, and her posted articles on the topic, she's received 25,000 web visits from more than 80 countries in support of Rehov and her efforts. No go at HBO, so she's working on getting other sources to distribute Rehov's documentaries, and if it's true, as they say, that "truth will prevail", then she will succeed.