Very interesting. Julie Burchill loves Israel,she thinks it should be bigger. My vote`s for Julie B. Israel Isreal. The sextremist Femen also have serious nihilist art propositions for Islam.

oh I know, how about this. The primary motivation of the left is to destroy Judeo-Christianity, and was since the French Revolution. This primary hatred has been so all encompassing that the following centuries have seen the culture war between those on the left who have rebelled against God and those who hold to belief in God. In this broad narrative the left has mutated in various ways presenting slightly different faces but still hunting the same enemy, Jews and Christians, in order to rid the world of the constraint on their freedom which God represents. We are now in the end game of this struggle and many on the left are willing to embrace Islam, in order to destroy their main enemy. They will embrace a foreign warlike God in order to destroy that which they hate in their own culture. Their hatred is giving strength to an enemy which may in the end consume them! Some might think this is farfetched, but it makes as much sense, more sense, than the aplogetic nonsense above.

Q.V. George Steiner's "In Bluebeards Castle" 1971 where he confronted the fons et origo of anti-semitism head-on : the blackmail of perfection viz. Moses, Christ, Marx whose messianic summons to perfection induced the deep, sub-conscious loathing and murderous resentment we witness now, and have done for 2 millenia.

Germany initiated and lost two wars in the 20th century. The victors imposed surrender terms. The soviets after WW2 moved the eastern border of Poland 200 miles to the west and annexed all of the former Polish territory. The western border of Poland moved hundreds of miles west to the Oder Neisse line and German lands including Prussia disappeared. There were many millions of German civilian refugees from these former lands. Has anyone from the left complained about any of this or could it be that Soviet imperialism is ideologically acceptable to them. Israel has been under siege since its inception. It accepted the UN 1947 partition plan, the Arabs did not, and have refused every other offer made since then. But for Nick Cohen it is the poor Palestinians that his heart heaves for, no sympathy for Israeli civilians who are under constant threat , not a word about the judenrein policies of the PLO and Hamas. Not a word about the eviction of Jewish communities in Arab lands whose presence ante dated the Muslim conquest. No sir, for good old Nick and his chums it is the building of houses on a few acres of the Judean desert that really distresses him.

But what if the anti-Semitism practiced by Christians against the Jews for forever and a day has much deeper roots than is usually suspected. Consider this understanding of the origins of the "New" Testament and its far-reaching cultural consequences. The "New" Testament is, at its core, an independent tradition. Christianity separated itself from Judaism, and became something else. Unfortunately, in making that separation, the Jewish converts to Christianity maintained a claim on the holy books of Judaism, and they even claimed to be the new "true Israel" - and, thus, established a principle of cultural superiority that, eventually, gave rise to all the horrors of anti-Semitism that Jewish people have been made to suffer for centuries. Such a presumption also suggested that the historical tradition of the Jews had been superseded. Such is, among other efforts made on the basis of the absurd presumption of cultural superiority, a negative result of the institutional Christian church. Added to the absurd presumption of cultural superiority was, eventually, all of the inherently self-deluding and self-corrupting association with political and social power, when Christianity became established as an "official" State religion, with the power of Imperial Rome at its base. Furthermore this obnoxious presumption re the cultural "superiority" of Christianity combined with the power of first the Roman State, then subsequently all other Christian states, has also created terrible problems for ALL of humankind ever since too.

This is in part a helpful discussion with some enlightening points. In particular, Cohen’s description of a ‘borderless left’ is interesting, as is Julius on the four responses to the collapse of the Left. Unhelpful, however, is the usual visceral but generalised hostility towards Netanyahu/Likud. By all means disagree with some policies of the current Israeli administration – I’ve got some fairly low-level criticisms myself. But to present it is as a hard-right Likud government at which one might be ‘appalled’ is just wrong. In reality it’s a coalition reflecting Israeli thinking on the mainstream left/centre/right given the blatant rejectionism and incitement of Israel's neighbours. So to present Netanyahu as a ‘disaster’ is OTT, not least because he’s arguably done reasonably ok. Indeed, even though I’m a UK citizen who’s only ever voted Labour or LibDem, I’d be tempted to vote for Netanyahu if I was an Israeli at the coming election. Overall he’s probably done the least bad job any PM could have in the circumstances: leaders that have roughly the same ideology as the London 7/7 bombers are now in charge in south Lebanon, Gaza, West Bank, and Egypt (and almost certainly Syria soon as well), while western leaders keep trying to get Israel to make concessions to these people that will put its citizens’ life and limb at risk in return for nothing. As for settlements, the language of Cohen and Julius is again inaccurate. Israel hasn’t built any new settlements since the 1990s, as required by the Oslo accords, and it has almost completely kept its commitment not to allow existing settlements to expand beyond current boundaries. Recent announcements of building programmes are for new houses within existing settlements, which is allowed under Oslo, and nearly always in settlements which will end up on the Israeli side of any future final border. I don’t see how Israel can let such places just over the Green Line stagnate because Palestinians refuse to negotiate a deal, especially since it has been clear under all recent Israeli leaders that settlements ending up on the Palestinian side will be evacuated. Even the area known as E1, between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, is designated for annexation to Israel under the Geneva Accord (www.geneva-accord.org/mainmenu/static-maps/), the most generous of peace plans for the Palestinians giving them the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank and E. Jerusalem. And the reason for the E1 announcement is simple: the Palestinians’ recent successful bid at the UN effectively means they have binned Oslo. That’s the real story here. Sorry for the long comment. But I’m fed up of this kind of unthinking knee-jerk anti-Netanyahu/anti-Likud rhetoric, not just because it’s a distraction, but also because it feeds into the myth of Israeli intransigence and malice at the heart of the new anti-Semitism that we’re all supposed to be against.

So glad to see that Steve Bell's anti-Semitic cartoon was mentioned. The Guardian should apologise for that racist garbage.