On Tuesday, the Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, noted that the government is devoting an extra £250 million this year to enhance the security of Britain’s Jewish community. He did so in the context of a statement about British foreign policy and efforts to advance a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. Mr Miliband is many things, but he is not stupid. He knew what his government was doing. And he knew why the two things were connected.
The decision by the British government to sanction anyone associated with what they term ‘illegal settlements’ in the West Bank has heartened every anti-Semite in the world. As the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, has pointed out, ‘the cumulative effect of such punitive policies is to further embolden those, at home and abroad, who use hatred as a weapon against Jews’. Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband have chosen to make the lives of our Jewish citizens less safe by applying a double standard to the conduct of the world’s only Jewish state and endorsing a campaign driven by those who single out Jews as uniquely evil.
Mr Miliband’s actions are nothing if not political, designed to cheer voters in one particular constituency
That is far from the only problem with what the Foreign Secretary announced on Tuesday, but it is the most troubling. Since the massacre of 7 October 2023, when more Jews lost their lives than on any day since the Holocaust, there has been a global upsurge in anti-Semitism. Not just rhetoric, though that has been escalating and hateful, but physical violence. In the United Kingdom, synagogues have been targeted on holy days, worshippers murdered, ambulances firebombed and citizens assaulted on the street.
