UPDATE Letter in today's Guardian, here.

Ghada Karmi has had a Cif piece published today which accurately represents much current conspiracy thinking about Israel and about Jews. Cif, it is to be remembered, is the website of the Guardian newspaper. It is not some weird right wing racist rag, it is not some bitter old Stalinist dinasour - it is a major liberal, antiracist forum for contemporary intellectual debate in the UK.

Karmi, describes Finkelstein as an "American Jewish scholar".

She describes Dershowitz as a "Harvard Jewish lawyer".

She introduces Julius as a "British Jewish lawyer".

Perhaps she finds it important to tell us who is Jewish and who isn't because of her attitude to Jews, about which she is explicit in her book Married to Another Man.

In this book she insists that Jews do not constitute a nation and so her proposed solution to the conflict is "to turn back the clock before there was a Jewish state and re-run history from there". (page 265) I wonder if Karmi's Back to the Future conception of History will provide the intellectual backbone of one of the proposals at the Annapolis peace talks to be held next month. Perhaps Condolezza Rice should get on the phone to Emmett Brown in case he is able to play a constructive role there.

In Karmi's universe there is no such entity as the Jewish people since they lack "biological, racial or national" characteristics." (page 68)

But she does describe Jews as a "tormented, suspicious and neurotically self-absorbed community toughened by centuries of the need to survive". (page 120)

Pretty well every claim Karmi makes in this piece, which attempts to alert us Brits to the danger of Jewish power, is false.

Karmi says, without a single piece of evidence that the Oxford Union was "intimidated by threats from various pro-Israel groups" into cancelling its invitation of Norman Finkelstein. As far as I can see, Trimble refused to debate against the single staters on Finkelstein's team and Dershowitz made some rather overblown criticism of Finkelstein's antisemitism.

Karmi bizzarely mis-characterizes Dershowitz articulating his opinion as a "gross interference in British democratic life".

Karmi says that the Oxford Union debate would have been an "important discussion". How can she claim that the toffs after-dinner cabaret is a fitting place to hold an important discussion? How can she claim that a forum which is hoping to host Nazis David Irving and Nick Griffin is to be taken seriously?

Karmi says that the Harvard Jewish Lawyer Dershowitz and the British Jewish Lawyer Julius threatened to "devastate and bankrupt anyone acting against Israeli universities." This again is simply false. Dershowitz made this legal threat against people who proposed to discriminate against Israeli scholars - this was a response to Karmi and her friends supporting an illegal policy of discrimination. Dershowitz didn't threaten legal action against critics of Israel or against anyone who acted against Israeli universities. It was a response to an antisemitic proposal to exclude scholars who work in Israel from British campuses. If Karmi wants to argue against those who would use legal remedies against racist exclusions then she is free to do so. But she should do so honestly.

Karmi claims, in an astonishing outburst of honesty that "The power of the Israel lobby in America is legendary." Indeed the legend has been going on for a very long time and was articulated most fully in the legendary book the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. How can Karmi use a term like "legendary" to describe Jewish power? How is it that she is not immediately struck by the incongruity of the term? Conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy theory precisely at the point when actual claims become "legendary".

Karmi portrays criticism as bullying and campaigning as the illegitimate work of an overwhelmingly powerful 'lobby'.

The central analogy in this piece tells us what Karmi really thinks: that criticism is like terrorism.

She says that criticism of her, and of her coterie of Israel-haters and boycotters, constitutes "intellectual terrorism".

It is an illustration of her considerable political disorientation that she can become confused over the distinction between intellectual criticism and terrorism.

Brian Whitaker, who works at Comment is Free, says he has turned down a number of blogs recently from "critics of Israel" on the grounds of quality. I'd love to see the pieces he turned down, if he thinks this one was worth printing.

David T of Harry's Place tells the actual story of the Oxford Union debate here.

David Hirsh