JERUSALEM (EJP)—British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said during a visit to Israel that he is a supporter of “the homeland for the Jewish people”.
During a three- day visit to Israel and the West Bank. Miliband talked to students in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
The trip is one of Miliband’s first major foreign trips since being elected opposition leader in September 2010.
While criticising Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Miliband, who met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netnyahu, emphasised the importance of Israel’s security and referred to Israel as “the homeland for the Jewish people”. He added, “This is not a theoretical idea for me, it is my family experience. That is how I think about it.”
Netanyahu’s demand that Israel to be recognised as a Jewish state in a final status agreement with the Palestinians continues to be rejected by the Palestinian leadership.
Miliband also spoke very strongly against an academic boycott of Israel, saying, “I don’t think boycotts are the solution to the complex problems Israeli and Palestinian people grapple with.”
Miliband is the son of Jewish immigrants. Sixty members of his family were killed during the Holocaust, including his grandfather, who died in a labour camp.
He said he wants to become Britain’s first Jewish Prime Minister and will not be held back by the “elements” of anti-Semitism that still exist in this country.
He said: “Someone asked me if I thought it was a disadvantage, that people would be less likely to vote for me because I’m Jewish, and I said absolutely not. That’s one of the great things about Britain. There are elements of anti- Semitism, [and]it is really, really important to tackle those and have no truck with them. I have said I hope that I’ll be the first Jewish prime Minister if we win the election, but it is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage.”
During his visit, the Labour leader, who was accompanied by his wife Justine, renewed some old family ties. He met with his 84 year-old Aunt Sarah Ben Zvi at her home on Nachshonim Kibbutz near Tel Aviv, and on Friday he had a ‘deeply moving’ surprise when he approached by a man whose mother had shared a shelter with his own relatives in Nazi-occupied Belgium.
The man, Mandel Mandelbaum, came to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem especially to meet Miliband after hearing about the connection the night before.
Miliband’s father and grandfather escaped to England on the last boat leaving Nazi-occupied Belgium in 1940.