LONDON Oxford University's debating society has bowed down to pressure from the Zionist lobby to cancel a debate, which was due included British Historian David Irving, renown for disputing the extent of the so-called Jewish Holocaust.

The President of the Oxford Union, Amy Harland, was said to have denounced the campaign to stop Thursday night's event as cynical political point-scorers, who did not have the university's students at heart.

The cancelation followed orchestrated pressure from several Zionist groups in Britain, who have expressed outrage at the views of Irving and his invitation to speak in a debate on restricting the "free speech of extremists."

The Editor of London's *** Jewish Chronicle***, Ned Tempo, welcomed the cancelation but criticized the decision by the union to ask the historian to speak, saying he had been found to be a "racist, anti-Semite" in a historic libel trial in Britain last year.

Jewish Labour Peer Lord Janner was quoted by *** The Guardian *** newspaper Thursday also saying it was "disgraceful" that the union was proposing to provide a platform to Irving, who "misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."

(IRNA)