Since 9/11 and Iraq, a millenarian cauldron of old-fashioned anti-Semitic conspiracy theories claims that secretive Jews (the wicked "neo-cons") are controlling Bush, Blair and the media, and even arranged 9/11. Anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism have become interchangeable.

The conspiracy fever sounds like something out of that notorious forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, mixed with the medieval blood libel about the drinking of Christian children's blood. This rubbish seeps over the internet from the Arab media, where feverish anti-Semitism is the norm, to insane US/UK websites. The message: from Iraq to 9/11, it's the Jews wot did it.

Even respectable commentators are at it. Tam Dalyell MP last year said that Tony Blair was "unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers". After al-Qaeda's Madrid bombings, left-wing commentators argued that the Zionist state was the real source of terrorism. (Yet Israel is the leading Islamist grievance solely in the western media: a glance at jihadist websites actually shows Israel is mentioned much less often than Chechnya, Kashmir, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.) The liberal historian Anthony Sampson blames the turmoil in Iraq on a "neoconservative cabal and the Israeli government". Whatever he actually meant, "cabal" has become a code word, a shibboleth. (Always a "cabal". What would Charles II's Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington, Lauderdale make of this? Or were they really Cliffordstein, Ashleichem, the Duke of Buckinghamowitz, Arlingtonbaum and Lauderschnigelglas?)

Conspiracies are founded on coincidence and fantastical connections. Obviously there is no cabal. There were more Jews in Bill Clinton's administration than there are in Bush's; most American Jews are Democrats. Bush's Iraq policy is actually led by Donald Rumsfeld (of German ancestry) and two African Americans, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. (Ever read about the "African American cabal"? Hardly.) This Judification of US policy resembles Goebbels's campaigns against "the Jew Roosevelt". Besides, if the media were really controlled by Jews, they would not continually run anti-Israeli stories. Or covers such as the New Statesman's own "Kosher conspiracy", published in January 2002: illustrated with a brazen caricature, it suggested a London-Jewish conspiracy of arms dealers and press barons, then concluded that no such coven existed.