Pro-Palestine university protests are espousing “antisemitism repurposed for the Instagram age”, Michael Gove has said in a speech about countering extremism.
The communities secretary accused encampments at British universities of being “alive with anti-Israel rhetoric and agitation” that was “deeply, profoundly intimidatory to Jewish students and others”.
Speaking at the JW3 community centre in north London on Tuesday, he named academics and university encampments who he said were using rhetoric “hostile” to Jewish students.
He mentioned graffiti at Leeds University that he said accused a faculty of funding “an effing genocide” and which said Israel was harvesting Palestinian organs. He also pointed to posters at a Bristol University encampment that claimed the media and politicians were “Zionist funded”, as well as a proclamation at the Soas University of London that the student union was “a historically anti-Zionist space with a duty to uphold BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions]”.
“Yet again telling Jewish students that they are not welcome unless they deny their own identity,” Gove said. “Antisemitism repurposed for the Instagram age.”
He added: “How can Jewish students experience this as anything other than the most direct hostility and hate? And how can we allow it to continue unchallenged?”
Gove urged all universities and public bodies to sign up to a charter against antisemitism, adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism and make clear that “antisemitic agitation will be met with clear disciplinary action”.
He said that among other actions, the government had to bolster the role of its independent adviser on antisemitism, and pledged to establish a parallel independent adviser on anti-Muslim hatred.
Gove also denounced the organisers of the fortnightly pro-Palestine protests in London for not doing more to counter antisemitic material and the intimidation of Jewish people.
He endorsed a recommendation by the Walney review on political violence and disruption, which is being published on Tuesday by former Labour MP John Woodcock, that the organisers of those marches should contribute to the cost of policing them.
Gove argued that antisemitism was the “canary in the mine” for the health of democracy and the whole political system.
He said there was evidence that the extreme left, hard right and Islamists were sharing common platforms and converging “on antisemitic tropes, language, ideas and agitation”.
He concluded: “We must not be silent. We must not let tolerance for different views become a moral relativism that refuses to defend the democratic principles and traditions we cherish in this country.
“We must say to every Jewish citizen in this country: your safety is the best guarantee of our security. Your freedom to live as you choose is the only way that we can be certain we remain a land of liberty.”
Asked about the increase in anti-Muslim hatred since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October, Gove said he was “deeply concerned about it”.
“Some of those who are most intent on dividing Muslims are the people who attempt to weaponise antisemitism,” he said.
Asked about the international criminal court prosecutor’s decision to seek an arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Gove said it was “wrong to project any sort of moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas”.
“Of course it is the case that Israel and the Israeli government have and will make mistakes, and they need to be held accountable for those errors,” Gove said. “But there is a difference between a state attempting to defend its own citizens against a terrorist attack and a terrorist organisation that has made it clear that it will act with the utmost ruthlessness.”
Gove urged opposition parties to back the government’s controversial anti-BDS bill, which is making its way through the House of Lords and is designed to bar public bodies from boycotting Israel.
Commenting on Gove’s speech Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: “Nobody truly committed to antiracism and to suppressing hatred is going to take any lessons from Michael Gove.
“That he should choose to issue his speech at a moment when Israel is on trial in the world’s highest court for the crime of genocide and the day after its leader has been threatened with arrest warrants for war crimes from the ICC, is grotesque, but given his track record, unsurprising.
“He should be devoting his energies at the moment to ensuring his government upholds its responsibilities under international law rather than trying to smear those who are protesting against the current genocide.”