Former "Nightline" reporter Dave Marash has quit Al-Jazeera English, saying Thursday his exit was due in part to an anti-American bias at a network that is little seen in this country.

Marash said he felt that attitude more from British administrators than Arabs at the Qatar-based network.

Marash was the highest-profile American TV personality hired when the English language affiliate to Al-Jazeera was started two years ago in an attempt to compete with CNN and the BBC. He said there was a "reflexive adversarial editorial stance" against Americans at Al-Jazeera English.

"People label you a self-hating Jew, a traitor to Israel and Judaism," he says. "It's hurtful but dismissible. I don't see them as credible critics. They are articulating a prejudgment instead of exercising their curiosity."

"It makes me angry more than it pains me," he says. "I know it's illegitimate. Who arrogated the power to them to know what's inside of someone else? Anybody who knows me knows I'm not ashamed of my religion."

Al-Jazeera, he says, "has consistently offered a window of opportunity for Israel and Israeli citizens to speak to the Arab world. There is no contradiction between Judaism and al-Jazeera. As a Jew, I have always wished for and worked toward peace and civility in the Palestinian territories and Israel."

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