who have contributed so powerfully to the life of this nation". Gove is, like the great majority of UK Conservative Party MPs, a member of Conservative Friends of Israel. He has said that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel is anti-Semitic. Gove said that jihadist terrorists "hate Israel, and they wish to wipe out the Jewish people's home, not because of what Israel does but because of what Israel is – free, democratic, liberal and western." First World War In an article about the First World War centenary in January 2014, Gove criticised academic and television interpretations of World War I as "left-wing versions of the past designed to belittle Britain and its leaders." Some of Gove's key points were rebuffed by the academics that Gove had used to support his thesis. Gove had criticised Cambridge professor Sir Richard Evans saying his views were more like that of an undergraduate cynic in a Footlights review. Instead he urged people to listen to Margaret MacMillan of Oxford University. MacMillan responded, saying: "I agree with some of what Mr Gove says, but he is mistaking myths for rival interpretations of history. I did not say, as Mr Gove suggests, that British soldiers in the First World War were consciously fighting for a western liberal order. They were just defending their homeland and fighting what they saw as German militarism." Evans said Gove's attack was "ignorant" and asked how anyone could possibly say Britons were fighting for freedom given their country's main ally was Tsarist Russia. Jeremy Paxman said Gove had "wilfully misquoted" Evans on the subject of the First World War. Religion In 2012, Gove was behind plans to provide schools throughout England and Wales with a copy of the King James Bible (inscribed "presented by the Secretary of State for Education") to celebrate the 400th anniversary of its translation into English, though he said he backed the scheme because of the historical and cultural significance of that translation rather than on purely religious grounds. In 2013, Gove credited Cardinal Keith O'Brien with using his intellect to protect the vulnerable in Scotland whilst regretting the absence of a similar figure in the Kirk. In April 2015, he described his faith in an article for The Spectator. In widely reported remarks, he complained that "to call yourself a Christian in contemporary Britain is to invite pity, condescension or cool dismissal." In