Logic,

Thanks for the comments and I must admit that I tend to agree.

My efforts were mainly to drag any debate back to the centre and balance out some of the more extreme comments at either end.
I hope I didn't over-compensate.

It's a complex area and deserves informed comment rather than emotional rhetoric - something I'm also prone to from time-to-time.

Logic...I have never said nor believed that Israel owes its existence solely, or even mainly, to the Holocaust. A number of factors brought the modern Jewish state into being, and the Holocaust was certainly one of them. But its importance or otherwise simply cannot be measured. How does one put a figure on the degree of sympathy the rest of the world felt after the war for Jewish suffering? All one can say is that, for all kinds or reasons, this sympathy would have been stronger in English-speaking countries, and much weaker in the Arab/Moslem world. But it is myopic to deny or play down the influence the Holocaust had on later history.