The Question Only a Jewish Minister Gets Asked

Ed Miliband announced sanctions against Israeli settlements in the House of Commons. By the next morning, Britain was debating how often he goes to synagogue.

Sir Ephraim Mirvis, Britain’s chief rabbi, called the measures a dark day for British Jews and warned that they could embolden those who wish Jews harm. On BBC Radio 4, Justin Webb asked Miliband what he would say to British Jews going to synagogue for Rosh Hashanah, feeling less safe. Then came a question that could have been put only to a Jewish foreign secretary: “Are you going?”

Miliband said that he does not attend synagogue. Webb implied that this was the point: perhaps the Chief Rabbi’s warning meant less to a minister outside congregational life.

The concern behind the question was legitimate. British Jews may bear the consequences of policy towards Israel for which they have no responsibility, especially visibly Jewish people and congregations already worried about security. But that is a question for any foreign secretary. “Are you going?” changed the subject. It moved the argument from Miliband’s judgment to the kind of Jew he is.

Miliband had put Jewish identity at the center of his case himself. He spoke as a proud British Jew, recalled his family’s experience of Nazi persecution, and described his attachment to Israel. Biography may explain that attachment. It confers no greater authority on his Israel policy than absence from synagogue removes. Webb’s question was the mirror image of Miliband’s opening: one offered Jewishness as a credential, the other asked to inspect it.

It did Mirvis no favors either. His warning was political, not pastoral. Would action against Israeli settlements encourage those who already hold British Jews responsible for Israel’s conduct? Miliband answered a related but distinct question: anyone who blames British Jews for an Israeli government’s actions, he said, is engaging in antisemitism.

Both propositions can be true. Jews bear no responsibility for Israeli government decisions, and antisemites may hold them responsible anyway. A government cannot protect Jews simply by exposing the irrationality of those who threaten them. Nor can a warning about antisemitic consequences, by itself, determine British policy towards Israel.

That policy is substantial. Britain will ban imports from West Bank settlements, sanction companies and individuals involved in settlement expansion, prohibit the advertising of settlement property in Britain, and refuse export licenses for goods that materially contribute to an occupation it now regards as unlawful. Israel closed the British consulate in Jerusalem.

The package can be contested. Synagogue attendance cannot decide it.

The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council joined Mirvis in opposing the measures. Jonathan Wittenberg, senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism, backed them after visiting Umm al Khair, a West Bank village beset by settlers. Progressive Judaism urged communal leaders to make the range of Jewish opinion visible.

Europe has had this argument before. Bruno Kreisky, born into an assimilated Jewish family in Vienna, escaped Nazi persecution into Swedish exile and became Austria’s foreign minister and then its chancellor. He was one of Europe’s most conspicuous critics of Israeli policy.

Kreisky championed Palestinian national rights, cultivated Arab leaders, and helped give the Palestinian question a place in European diplomacy. The PLO opened an office in Vienna in 1978, and Austria formalized relations in 1980. During the 1973 hostage crisis, Golda Meir flew to Vienna to change his position on closing the Schönau transit camp and failed.

His stance reflected Austrian neutrality, European social democracy, and a belief that a small neutral state could open channels between antagonists. It also provoked a political loyalty test. Austria’s conservative People’s Party had questioned whether he was Austrian enough. In Israel, especially in Begin’s eyes, he was a self-hating Jew. One side doubted his Austrian loyalty, the other his Jewish loyalty.

Kreisky’s abuse of Simon Wiesenthal was disgraceful. After Wiesenthal showed that Freedom Party leader Friedrich Peter had served in an SS unit implicated in murdering Jews, Kreisky accused the Holocaust survivor of mafia methods and collaboration with the Gestapo. After renewed attacks, a court convicted him of defamation in 1989.

That record deserves condemnation for what Kreisky said and did. His Middle East policy deserves to be judged on its assumptions, consequences, and political wisdom. Dismissing either as an expression of Jewish self-hatred evades the harder task of deciding where Kreisky was right and where he was wrong.

The same discipline is needed now. Opponents of Miliband’s sanctions can argue that they will not change Israeli policy, will harden Israeli opinion, weaken Britain’s influence, and prove difficult to distinguish from wider economic action against Israel. Mirvis’s fear that they will deepen Jewish insecurity also deserves evidence and attention.

Supporters can answer that repeated British criticism failed to restrain settlement growth; that targeted sanctions distinguish between Israel and settlements; and that, with E1 advancing, support for a two-state outcome becomes meaningless unless governments attach consequences to policies that make Palestinian territorial continuity impossible.

What divides the two camps is a judgment about which policy will best protect Israeli security, Palestinian rights, Jewish safety, and the possibility of peace. Affection for Israel can be found on both sides.

Miliband may have judged wrongly. His measures may prove ineffective, disproportionate, or counterproductive. That is the ground on which to challenge them. Jewish ancestry gives him no special authority to criticize Israel and creates no special duty to defend the Israeli government.

The same discipline protects his critics. Mirvis does not forfeit an independent political judgment because his position coincides with Israel’s government. British Jews who fear that sanctions will encourage antisemitism should no more be dismissed as proxies for Jerusalem than Jewish supporters of sanctions should be treated as deserters from it.

Turning a disagreement over Israel into a story about Jewish loyalty assigns diaspora Jews a political role they did not choose. When they defend the Israeli government, they are suspected of divided allegiance; when they criticize it, they are asked whether they have betrayed an inherited obligation. Either way, their standing as citizens is made conditional.

Israel has little to gain from this arrangement. It should be able to keep friends who disagree with its government. Diaspora Jews should be able to defend Israel against antisemitism, affirm its right to security and national self-determination, and still oppose policies they believe endanger those very things.

Mirvis’s warning belongs in the argument. It cannot end it. A government contemplating sanctions must weigh their effect on Jewish safety, Israeli politics, Palestinian lives, and the prospects for peace. But to let the threat of an antisemitic reaction rule out action against Israeli policy would hand those prepared to threaten Jews a veto over British foreign policy.

Miliband owes the British public a defense of his measures: what they are meant to achieve, why these instruments were chosen, what costs they will impose, and how success will be measured. His critics should hold him to that standard.

Jewish identity may explain why this argument feels so personal. It cannot supply the answer.

Webb’s first question, what a foreign secretary says to British Jews who feel less safe, deserves the fullest answer a government can give.

The second deserves none.