I wasn't aware that there was much holocaust denial amongst Germans. True, it's not the favourite topic of conversation over there (I worked in Berlin for six months in the 1990s), but I never encountered any overt denial or even anything that would imply such an attitude. The holocaust museum / memorial in Berlin was well-attended on both occasions I visited it (and there were German school trips there both days). And as you pointed out, the Third Reich kept meticulous records. The sort of records that transform holocaust-denial into an absurdly convoluted conspiracy-theory.

And I'd certainly agree with you about the "Jew-haters". There's a clear link between antisemitism and holocaust-denial, but I suppose that shouldn't surprise anyone.

Having said all that, I myself do possess mildly controversial views about the holocaust. I don't doubt that it happened, nor do I question the numbers involved or the barbarism (even "evil") that it represented. I've visited a couple of the camps, been to the museums and memorials and read plenty of Primo Levi. It happened and it was as brutal and as vile as it's made out to be.

BUT, I have concerns about the way the holocaust has been dealt with over the past 65 years. Both -- in different ways -- by jews and non-jews. I think it's been a dreadful mistake to have elevated such a dark and traumatic event onto such an influential pedestal. I believe the psyche of the jewish people was severely traumatised by the holocaust and that the State of Israel is now in the grip of a collective paranoid psychosis as a result of a post-traumatic stress that's never been properly dealt with.

This is why Israeli policy so often produces confusion among western commentators. "Don't they realise," they ask, "that Israel is playing right into the hands of the Islamist extremists? That they are pursuing a strategy which is guaranteed to act as a recruitment campaign for anti-Israeli imiltants?"

But such confusion only makes sense if you assume that Israeli policy is a product of a rational analysis of the situation, rather than a product of a consuming paranoia.

This doesn't justify the often absurd over-reactions of Israel. But it does go some of the way towards explaining it, I believe. And it may also point the way towards a new way of dealing with the situation; one that focusses on the real motivations of those involved, rather than some assumed "rational strategy", especially considering that the Palestinian people have themselves entered an altered state of (collective) consciousness thanks to generations of occupation and being under siege.

Beyond that, I've never felt comfortable with the simple fact of the "State of Israel". First of all, why were the Palestinians displaced in order to provide jews with a home? I don't buy into the "well, they were here 2,000 years ago" line. That's really not a legitimate reason to displace an entire population into refugee camps. And "well, God told us that this land is ours" doesn't cut it either.

Ultimately, I have serious problems with the notion of racially and/or religiously-defined states. Jews are given preferential treatment by the State of Israel -- in social policy matters such as immigration and housing -- which draws surprisingly little international criticism compared with, say, the policies of South Africa during apartheid.

And I also find myself wondering -- just like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- why the collective holocaust-guilt of the West didn't result in a jewish state being formed in Bavaria, or some other chunk of German territory. It may not have been exactly what the jewish people wanted, but would surely have represented a far more just solution than giving away someone else's country to assuage European guilt.

And finally, two quotes:

"My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power... I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our ranks, which we have already had to fight strongly even without a Jewish state... A return to a nation in the political sense of the word would be equivalent to turning away from the spiritualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets."
-- Albert Einstein

"Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us."
-- Albert Einstein