So Ed Miliband’s Jewish. Big Deal – so was Karl Marx!

Anybody who imagines that Ed Miliband’s Jewishness presages a warm touchy-feely attitude towards Israel is inevitably bound for disappointment. The Miliband brothers were raised by parents who to all intents and purposes appear to fit Isaac Deutscher’s blueprint of the politically radical “non-Jewish Jew”. Karl Marx was one such. So was Rosa Luxemburg. (You get the picture.)

Ralph Miliband, Ed and David's father, was a prominent Marxist economist and intellectual. Knowing that, and being fully aware that his mother, Marion Kozak, is a longstanding member of the organisation Jews for Justice for Palestinians, which has made some dodgy moves in its time (not least organising the latest seaborne attempt to break the Gaza blockade), I for one did not expect that Ed would prove any more sympathetic to Israel than did big brother David when he was Foreign Secretary.  And since Ed owes his extraordinary projection into the Labour Party’s top job to his buddies the trades union leaders (most Labour MPs voted for David) I’m not surprised that he seems even harsher towards Israel than David did. After all, many of the unions are hell-bent on boycotting Israel these days.

So when I read what the man widely dubbed "Red Ed" has been saying about Israel in a speech to the party faithful and in a radio interview I just shrugged my shoulders and muttered “So what else is new?”

What did Ed tell those audiences? That he’s an atheist. Yep. Figures. It fits the mould. That faith schools are “fantastic”. Ha! Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? (Wink, wink.) That when asked whether he supports the Palestinians’ so-called right of return he gave a non-commital answer: “It depends which parts of the land and which borders and I’m not going to prejudge that.” Par for the course. That he added: “ It’s important we do what we can to facilitate peace in the Middle East. I think what we need to work towards is a two-state solution and a two-state solution must involve Israel and the Palestinians getting together and reaching an agreement, I’m not going to pre-judge what that agreement should be.” No surprises there either. And that he declared “I will always defend the right of Israel to exist in peace and security. But Israel must accept and recognize in its actions the Palestinian right to statehood. That is why the attack on the Gaza Flotilla was so wrong. And that is why the Gaza blockade must be lifted and we must strain every sinew to work to make that happen." None there either – though his failure to acknowledge the Qassam rocket attacks that Israel has had to endure from Hamastan is an ominous twist.

Not to worry too much. At least, not yet. For there’s one consolation in all this – that the uncharismatic nasal-voiced Ed faces an uphill and probably impossible struggle in his quest for the keys of Number Ten Downing Street.

In the meantime, those who make much of the fact that he is the Labour Party’s “first Jewish leader” and like to keep a tally of such things will have to console themselves with the fact that Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan had a paternal Jewish grandmother, a Miss Bernstein. That the philosemitic George Lansbury, who led the Labour Party between the wars, had a Jewish daughter-in-law, Minnie Glassman (whom I mentioned in one of my earliest posts). That Hugh Gaitskell, who led the party from 1955-63, had a Jewish wife, Dora Creditor, who became a life peer, and was – I’m happy to say – strongly pro-Israel. And that Gaitskell’s colourful, oft-inebriated deputy, George Brown, was – although he ran off with his secretary after 45 years of marriage – also wed to a Jewish wife, Sophie Levene.