Last week's posting on antisemitism unsurprisingly resulted in As It Happens' largest post bag to date but with, surprisingly, no attacks on its essential thesis - that it is time to draw breath and question some of the West's assumptions about antisemitism and our attitudes to Israel.

There were quibbles and differences of emphasis - and it clearly pained some individuals, by no means necessarily Jewish, whose distaste for antisemitism (shared by us) was an absolute of central importance to their world view.

This week, we thought that we would reproduce (with their permission) three critical contributions and see where it takes us.

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Conor Walsh, Lawyer

It was brave of you to write this blog today [World Holocaust Day] of all days. I might have waited for this day to pass.

But maybe it is right to begin a discussion sixty four years exactly from the day on which the gates of a certain place of fire and ash were forced open to reveal the terrible things within.

In essence this thoughtful article seems to me to be a rallying call for everyone who is concerned with the Protean forms of resurgent anti-semitism which is according to Thomas Kenneally (and to repeat a phrase I never tire of using) "a European disease - and it is a f*****g disease".

And it seems to me that any intelligent person should share the view I take from your writing that antisemitism needs to be challenged and controverted as intelligently as possible.

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Paul Stott, University of East Anglia

Firstly, my thinking on these matters was greatly influenced by Norman Finkelstein's remarkable book "The Holocaust Industry", which shows not just how Zionists have sought to place Jewish suffering above that of others in WW2, but to rewrite history to actively exclude others.

The abuse subsequently rained on Finkelstein tells us much about how wounding his analysis is. His book should be read by anyone debating these issues.

Secondly (and I don't blame you for not speculating on this) the assault on Gaza, played out on the world's TV screens and with harrowing scenes available on download for anyone with internet access, will have a catastrophic effect on the attitudes of Muslim societies and Muslim organisations and youth here in the West.

The BBC's despicable decision re a charity appeal merely makes a disastrous situation worse. What is the point in the British government, police and security services opposing radicalisation of British Muslims, then standing by and allowing the massacre in Gaza? Any good work that was done, has been fatally undermined.

The chances of a future terrorist attack in Europe (London?) on Jewish targets, or Jewish civilians, must now be considerable. The Israeli government is playing a key role in trapping all sides into hardline attitudes.

That is their choice, but at some stage British politicians will have to understand that what happens on the streets of Gaza actually has an effect on the streets of London, Manchester and Leeds.

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Christopher Bood, Marketing & Communications Adviser [France]

Bravo. As I remarked to Jewish friends and other Christian Arabs, Israel has, unfortunately, become a fascist democracy (contrary to its interests and world image).

This being said, I would dare comment on your latest remarks: "Israel will take no risks at all in order to give respect and dignity to those it has displaced. Its attitude is that of the Protestant settlers in the West of America faced with the Sioux or Navaho. They continue to build settlements defiantly to ensure their regional dominance".

As an 'islander' (British) you may, as I am sure you have done, ponder on South Africa, Ireland, the US ... with regards to international British mishaps.

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Christopher Bood's point about British imperialism (indeed, by extension, all imperialisms) is well taken and it should be understood from the start that the process of re-thinking history so that we see Israel in its appropriate light should be self-critically extended to every Western nation.

The reason for this should be obvious by now. The age of European dominance is coming to a close, both globally and within North American politics. 'Past victors' have written the narrative we call history and that narrative is about to be questioned - better that we do it ourselves than have others do it for us.

Paul Stott's comment stands on its own but Conor Walsh's requires a further response if only because Conor represents the strongest position in favour of Israel, questioning, much more in sorrow than in anger, what has happened over recent weeks and fearful that criticism may provide cover for dark forces.

His first sentence disturbed me - with the implication that it should be regarded as 'brave' to 'speak unto truth' on a day set as a memorial not by me but as a political decision 'from above'.

There is a profound difference between my position and recent trends in Western liberalism. I see a creeping liberal intellectual totalitarianism within culture and education which may eventually encompass a 'slavery day' or an 'anti-imperialism' day - or what have you. I contend this to be counter-productive.

Liberals think that it is proper, for example, to push Holocaust Studies on young teens (as happens to my children) and yet I know, as an analyst, that this has a specific social engineering and political purpose.

The implication is that non-Jews should feel shame and guilt when, in fact, my country (not since the Middle Ages) and my ancestors (to my knowledge) were not only not anti-semitic, they were Leftist and philo-semitic and fought national socialism directly.

I and others resent guilt and shame being implicitly forced upon children who are, in the most fundamental way, 'innocent' - for political purposes.

And to remove a potential misunderstanding - I am not arguing against a (voluntary) Holocaust Day for the Jewish people to which Gentiles are invited nor for full and open disclosure of the Shoah to teenagers in the course of history or civics and in context.

What I object to is the pre-emptive nationalisation of it and its 'centralisation' within a culture which was not responsible for the crime and would do far better, in its educational policy, to:-

• consider the 'human condition' (what psychological experiments since Milgram's devastating work have taught us) and critique power in our own country
• investigate and assess our own past use of militarism, land grab, exploitation and terror in our own drive for and withdrawal from empire.

But, of course, it is much easier psychologically to treat bad conduct as exceptional rather than start a process which might open up the door to a profound critique of our own inherited ruling order. This implies a tragic collusion between a single 'victim' narrative of Judaism and our own defensive elite.

So, I wanted to put anti-semitism in its proper place - as a wrong not just because of its particular targeting but because it represents an attitude of mind within the human condition. Antisemitism does indeed need to be 'challenged and controverted as intelligently as possible' (as Conor suggests).

The best way to do this is adopt a critical stance to its use, understand and deal with its causes and see it as a symptom of a much broader problem (not, sadly, a disease for political doctors to deal with but a response of some to stresses that need alleviation) that requires highly sensitive handling.

The disease analogy is a good one. Medicine works on the basis that sanitation and sound nutrition are in place so that medicine can do its job. Conditions of general equity and tolerance are equally necessary in dealing with cultures of hatred or else political cholera will break out willy-nilly.

'Gramscian' attempts to control the psychological and cultural infrastructure from above by intellectuals with half an education (the price of '68) assumes that the manipulated are 'thick' when they are not. Those under pressure resent this manipulation and they will eventually react accordingly.

For example, the wave of strikes against foreign workers across the UK are wholly legitimate protests against a genuine grievance - the assumption that local working class job losses were acceptable for increased middle class and skilled worker opportunities to work overseas.

Fortunately, there is no sign (yet) that the workers involved hold any animus towards Italians or Portuguese per se and they are (currently) only angry at the 'system' - but our elite has been playing with fire for a long time and the recession may burn their fingers yet.

Meanwhile, the tragedy of Israel is that, in filling a political vacuum created by guilt and shame with its own agenda, it has created the very conditions for that resentment to reappear against the Jewish people in the West much as it did in the Arab World.

European liberalism has tried to create a narrative of the Second World War for federal nation-building purposes that allows shame and guilt, and that weasel world 'reconciliation', to avoid any deep analysis of how Europe collapsed into violence in case it raises too many awkward questions it cannot answer.

Jews should be concerned as much as those Gentiles who see them as allies in maintaining secularism and social cohesion that European liberalism, right-wing Zionism and the commitment to international free markets are all in de facto alliance as we go into the worst economic situation in sixty years.

Enough! The subject if finished for As It Happens. We move on to other matters next week.

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