I may have a bit of a blinker on because my views on the subject are such that I doubt anyone would have aired an anti-Zionist opinion in front of me. To give you some idea, you're talking to a former member of the Conservative Friends of Israel (I left the Tory Party for a while after they ditched Margaret Thatcher).
One thing I will say that you are absolutely right about and Ms. Phillips is absolutely right about is the anti-Semitism of the Left. It's no coincidence that we see Palestinian flags flying among the anti-war protestors, and they all say in the same breath, "Freedom for Palestine".
I do think, however, there is an important distinction to be drawn, between the pseudo-intellectual anti-Semitism of the left wing establishment, and the gutter anti-Semitism that creates a Hitler. The former, I agree is very real, and very dangerous, the latter, and I still think I am right in saying this, is not something the average (non-Muslim anyway) person even thinks about.
Regards, Ivan
"I do think, however, there is an important distinction to be drawn, between the pseudo-intellectual anti-Semitism of the left wing establishment, and the gutter anti-Semitism that creates a Hitler."
Whatever its origins we Jews have learned to our cost that all anti-Semitism, given the right conditions, ends up in the same place. And there is as much anti-Semitism from other areas of the political arena with such proponents as A.N. Wilson whose own "descent into hate" has been so well catalogued by Jacobson recently. I remember being shocked some months ago when listening to a radio programme hosted by Matthew Paris in which everyone agreed that the Holocaust had been much overrated and really it wasn't such a big deal. I could give you many other examples in the media over the years from Robert Harris who wrote a piece entitled "It's about time Jews realised they were living in a Christian country" to Peregrine Worsthorne who was most indignant that his wife's foot had been stood on by an Orthodox Jew and expressed amazement that Jews post-Holocaust had not learned their lesson. And surely you saw the piece in the Spectator a year or so back that detailed just how rampant anti-Semitism had become in "all the right circles" in the capital?
In occupied Jersey during the war the British police handed over the Jews to the Nazis. It would have been no different in mainland Britain and recent events have shown that not much has changed. As Barbara Amiel put it most succintly: "Anti-Semitism is the street corner where the right and left meet in Britain."
The British have very many worthy qualities but philo-Semitism is certainly not one of them.