(The Times-UK) Michael Gove - Anti-Semitism has moved from hatred of Jews on religious or racial grounds to hostility towards the expression of Jewish identity in the Jewish state. No other democracy is on the receiving end of a campaign calling for its people to be shunned and their labor to be blacklisted. Campaigners for the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions movement argue that we should ignore ideas from Jewish thinkers if those thinkers come from Israel and treat Jewish commerce as a criminal enterprise if that business is carried on in Israel. This is anti-Semitism, impure and simple. It is the latest recrudescence of the age-old demand that the Jew can only live on terms set by others. Once Jews had to live in the ghetto, now they cannot live in their historic home. It is to Britain's eternal credit that we rejected centuries of prejudice one hundred years ago and pledged in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to extend to the Jewish people the rights enjoyed by Germans and Italians, Japanese and Mexicans - the right to a land they could call their own. The writer, a Member of the British Parliament since 2005, served as Secretary of State for Justice and Education.
2016-12-23 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive