Hold on, hold on. Let us not confuse concepts: anti-Semitism is not anti-Zionism, or anti-Israelism (if that isn't a word, it should be one). The most obvious proof for that is the aforementioned Haredi communities in Europe who are, rather obviously, Jewish, but are also, as a matter of religious principle, anti-Zionist. And no, the answer to that riddle is not that they hate themselves.

So honestly, if you seriously want to debate the question of whether Europe is still anti-Semitic or not, how about we leave Israel out of it and look at the Jewish communities inside Europe, and how those are treated. Then I think you'll see what I said - apart from some Muslim immigrants and to some extent some far-righters, especially in Eastern-Europe, anti-Semitism is pretty much dead. And in the case of those Muslims, it's really for the most part (not fully, I'll grant you) a case of radical anti-Zionism leading to anti-Semitism. Which is completely unacceptable, and grossly unfair to the European Jews, especially considering that most of them are in Europe because they don't want to support Zionism in Israel. But it doesn't really have much to do with the old kind of European/Christian anti-Semitism.

Hardly. I'd suggest you read this, an interview with Avi Pazner, who was Israeli ambassador in both Italy and France. You'll note that he definitely doesn't agree with me on all points, and that, understandably, he's rather quicker to call people or things anti-Semitic than I am. But he at least knows what he's talking about, and is not as blind/ill-willed (honestly, I don't know which of the two words is the more accurate here, you guys tell me) about the factors behind such anti-Semitism and/or anti-Zionism as a number of Americans here on the site seem to be.

You'll note that Pazner confirms a number of important points I've made:
- that European popular opinion was much more pro-Israel prior to the Israeli victories of 1967 and 1973
- that European popular support for the Palestinian intifada's has much to do with their perception of the conflict as an anti-colonial one
- that at least among contemporary Europeans (De Gaulle hardly counts as such), anti-Semitism as Pazner sees it generally arises from criticism of the actions of Israel, which then radicalizes
- that "the average person abroad" naturally has sympathy for what is perceived as the weaker side, i.e. the Palestines (he doesn't say that that goes more for Europeans than for Americans, but I think we can all agree that it does)

Besides that, he also points out - rightly - that in terms of official policy, the European stance in the conflict has often been, as governments' stances often tend to be, self-interested more than anything else, not being able to afford antagonizing the Arab states too much. I don't know if that has much effect on public opinion, though. The only thing in the article that I think is really silly or wrong is to describe the Venice Declaration as "anti-Israeli" (though while we're at it, note the word choice).

That Britain wasn't exactly thrilled to establish an Israeli state - well, considering the amount of Arab colonies / mandates they had in the Middle East, what exactly did you expect? That, and they had quite a lot of other things on their hands, both domestically and in foreign policy terms (e.g., India).

I was going to defend Ben Gurion, but upon verification, my recollection of the event, which was something like "the Haganah might have been aware but certainly not responsible" seems to be wrong, at least according to Wikipedia which says the Haganah explicitly asked Begin's Irgun to perpetrate the bombing.

I have no desire to start again with endless discussions about the silliness of dismissing two thousand years of Jewish history in the diaspora, which for all its horrors also contains many glorious and proud moments, and witnessed the birth of every intellectual or religious movement of any relevance in contemporary Judaism, as merely an interruption in the history of the state of Israel. And claiming that the Europe of the late 1940s had any obligation whatsoever to offer compensations for actions of the Roman Empire is patently ridiculous - with that kind of view of history, you might as well argue that the Jews in the Mandate had a four thousand year old debt to the descendants of Ishmael.

I'm sure older Europeans such as de Gaulle did not lose their anti-Semitic instincts from one day to the next, no, as Pazner proves in the article I linked to. Prejudices may need some time to die off, in much the same way that the KKK's nasty positions first became subjects only discussed in private in trusted company, as they were no longer accepted in public discourse, and then subjects not discussed at all except among a tiny minority of Americans. Nevertheless, by the sixties, those in the mainstream who still had anti-Semitic sentiments kept them to themselves, and public opinion was widely pro-Israel.

But as for the rest of your paragraph, bullshit. Regarding the Palestinians who were never a nation - while there is a certain amount of truth to that argument, the problem (from your perspective) is that it strongly reinforces the European view of the conflict as a neo-colonial one, in which a Western "nation" established itself in a lesser-developed non-Western region, where the local population hadn't yet reached the same level of nationhood, so to speak, as in Western countries.

The second problem is that while one can deny that there was such a thing as a Palestinian people - or, more accurately, that there might not have been such a thing as a Palestinian people by 1947 if not for the growing Jewish presence in that area - one can hardly deny that there was such a thing as an Arab people, of which a part lived in that area. The argument then seems to boil down to "it's fine to confiscate a part of another nation's country, as long as you don't take all of it" - but that would be more convincing if the people using such arguments showed any willingness to put that into practice with their own land. Just as an example, would those people be willing to return Arizona or California to Mexico, since after all that's just a small part of the USA, and there are tons of Mexicans there already?

Lastly, well, I already covered that, but let me phrase it a different way that perhaps will be more convincing: Jewish history is far too rich and varied to be presented in the simplistic way you are doing here, and you are doing a huge injustice to the likes of Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Samuel HaNagid, and the millions upon millions of other prominent or less prominent Jews of the diaspora - some of them with an interest in returning to Eretz Israel, others with none whatsoever. They deserve a lot better than to be abused by Christian propagandists who have replaced their predecessors' anti-Semitism by a kind of perverted philo-Semitism which, while obviously not remotely as bad, still shares the same characteristic of using the Jewish people as an eschatological pawn rather than appreciating them for their own sake.