Portia, Shylock and the exclusion of Israeli actors from the global cultural community

Is The Merchant of Venice an antisemitic play or is it a play which intimately depicts the anatomy of persecution, exclusion and bullying? The context to this particular discussion of the question is the visit to London in 2012 of the Israeli Habima Theatre Company with its production, and calls upon the Globe Theatre to dis-invite or to boycott the company as a protest against Israeli human rights abuses.