British Jews are becoming understandably agitated about a vile conference to be held on December 5 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Under the title 'Resisting Israeli Apartheid', a veritable galere of Jew-haters (including Jews) and Israelophobes -- starring Tom Paulin, the poet who compared Israeli soldiers to the Waffen SS and said the settlers should be shot -- is assembling for a day-long hate-in, which will do its bit to inflame the country's anti-Jewish and anti-Israel prejudice. But the Jewish community should resist hysteria, cool down, and think more strategically about how to respond to this event.

The agenda is, of course, utterly disgusting. By creating a whole conference around a lie, by having a succession of speakers articulating the lie and a succession of chairmen chairing the articulation of the lie, by using London University to lend the authority of its buildings, at least, to the promulgation of the lie -- and no doubt paying due attention to the need for a creche or access for the disabled to ease the attendance of those who wish to applaud the lie -- the organisers intend to create the fiction that the lie is actually true.

The lie is that Israel is an 'apartheid' state. No-one with a glancing knowledge of Israel and a brain not totally warped by the paranoid ravings of the Jew-hating left could possibly entertain this proposition for a minute. To say this of Israel is not only a collective libel on Israel but devalues the enormity of the crime of apartheid itself in South Africa. But of course, facts count for nothing with such a conference because the intention is simply to spew out lies and hatred and vilify Israel so that it becomes what it is already turning into, a pariah state in the eyes of Britain and Europe -- and so that the Jews are blamed for their own victimisation.

So it's no wonder Jews are upset. But hello -- it is not clever to bombard the head of SOAS with angry messages, some of which are no doubt abusive. It's extremely counter-productive. Similarly, it would not be clever to try to disrupt this meeting, or march around with banners outside. Anything which increases the opportunity for these creeps to wrap themselves in the mantle of victimhood is to be avoided at all costs.

What would be far better would be to organise a rival conference, preferably nearby, with a significant audience, to promulgate the truth about Israel's democracy, to record the ethnic cleansing of of Jews from Arab lands, to talk about the mortal threat to Israel -- and above all, to analyse the phenomenon of the Jew-hatred of the left, the lionisation of people like Paulin by the British intelligentsia, the widespread re-emergence without adverse comment of the Jewish conspiracy libel, and the pathology of those Jews who eagerly sign up to the agenda of the enemies of the Jewish people.

It is words that are doing as much damage to Israel and the Jews as terrorist bombs. And it is only words that will defeat them.