THE GREAT JEWISH ILLUSION

Ed Miliband and the Dangerous Belief That Integration Can Make Jews Forget the Lessons of Their Own History

Michel Benchimol | Sep 10, 2026

Ed Miliband at COP30 in Belém (Nov 21, 2025) By Xuthoria – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

There is an illusion that has followed Jews through modern history: the belief that if we integrate completely into the societies in which we live, eventually we will simply become Germans, French, British, Americans or Canadians.

History should have cured us of that illusion. German Jews considered themselves Germans. They fought for Germany, prospered in Germany and contributed enormously to German society. Then Germany reminded them that, to those who hated them, they were Jews. Their patriotism, education, success and assimilation did not save them.

Britain, France, America and Canada today are obviously not yet Nazi Germany. But with the extraordinary rise of anti-Jewish racism, Jews would have to be blind not to recognize the historical warning. We have every right to love the countries in which we live and to consider ourselves full citizens of them.

Jews may decide they have ceased to be outsiders; but the antisemite gets his own vote.

ED MILIBAND: WHEN INTEGRATION BECOMES AMNESIA

And then there is Ed Miliband, who should understand the necessity of Israel better than almost any British politician.

His grandmother found sanctuary in Israel after the Nazis murdered her husband—Miliband’s grandfather—and some 60 members of their family.

Miliband has spoken about visiting her in Tel Aviv and picking oranges on the kibbutz. This isn’t Jewish history he learned from a book. This is his own family history.

Yet today, as Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Miliband has become one of the leading voices behind Britain’s increasingly punitive approach toward Israel.

He calls himself a “proud British Jew.” I increasingly wonder where the emphasis belongs. Certainly British. Perhaps proud. But what has become of the historical consciousness that should accompany Jew?

His grandmother didn’t need Israel as an intellectual exercise in Zionism. She needed Israel because Europe had demonstrated what could happen when Jewish survival depended upon the goodwill of everybody else.

Yet her grandson now stands in the British Foreign Office using inflammatory language such as “ethnic cleansing” against the country that gave her refuge.

If Miliband wants to use expressions such as ethnic cleansing or genocide, then prove them. These are not fashionable political slogans. A man whose own family experienced actual extermination should understand that better than almost anyone.

And Miliband’s political surroundings make the contradiction even more remarkable.

This is the Labour Party that only a few years ago descended into an antisemitism crisis under Jeremy Corbyn.

Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission found that Labour had committed unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination in its handling of antisemitism complaints.

Corbyn himself repeatedly generated outrage among British Jews through his associations, rhetoric and handling of antisemitism within the party.

Miliband knows all of this. He lived through it. He remained a Labour politician through the Corbyn years and later criticized Corbyn’s handling of antisemitism.

Yet today, rather than being one of the strongest voices warning his party about where obsessive hostility toward Israel can lead, Miliband has become one of Britain’s most prominent official critics of the Jewish state.

That is the betrayal I find so difficult to understand.

His grandmother found sanctuary in Israel because history had demonstrated the catastrophic consequences of Jewish powerlessness.

Her grandson has inherited the safety, status and acceptance that previous generations of European Jews desperately wanted—and now seems extraordinarily comfortable using that position to condemn Israel.

Perhaps this is integration carried to its ultimate conclusion:

the need to demonstrate that you belong becomes stronger than the obligation to remember why your own people once desperately needed somewhere else to belong.

ADD ONE MORE NAME TO THE LIST

We already know the prominent Jewish voices whose attacks on Israel or Zionism are eagerly embraced by Israel’s opponents: Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Naomi Klein, Peter Beinart, Tony Judt, Avi Lewis and others. Their positions differ, sometimes substantially, and organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Neturei Karta arrive at anti-Zionism from very different ideological and religious directions.

But the effect is familiar. The words “As a Jew…” become a credential, allowing Israel’s opponents to respond: See? Even the Jews agree with us.

In my judgment, we can now add Ed Miliband to that list.

Not because criticizing Israel makes a Jew self-hating. Israel deserves criticism when it is wrong. But there comes a point when the intensity of the condemnation, the language being used and the willingness to lend Jewish credibility to accusations against Israel force a more uncomfortable question:

What exactly have you learned from Jewish history?

For Miliband, that question is impossible to separate from his own family. He remembers his grandmother, Tel Aviv, the kibbutz and the approximately 60 murdered relatives.

He appears to remember everything except the lesson.

INTEGRATION IS NOT IMMUNITY

German Jews thought they were Germans. French Jews think they are French. British Jews think they are British. American Jews think they are Americans. Canadian Jews—including me—think we are Canadians. And we are. But Jewish history teaches us that our acceptance has never been entirely ours to determine.

We can assimilate completely, become successful citizens and convince ourselves that antisemitism belongs to another century.

Then our children arrive at universities wearing a Star of David, defending Israel or simply refusing to apologize for being Zionists, and suddenly discover that acceptance sometimes has conditions attached. Then everyone asks where this anti-Jewish racism suddenly came from.

It didn’t suddenly come from anywhere. Anti-Jewish racism changes its vocabulary, its politics and its excuses, but it does not disappear merely because Jews have successfully integrated.

That is why Israel exists. Not because Israel is always right—it isn’t—and not because Jews cannot prosper elsewhere—we obviously can.

Israel exists because after two thousand years Jews finally understood that

Jewish survival cannot depend entirely upon somebody else’s willingness to protect Jews.

Miliband’s grandmother learned that lesson in the most brutal way imaginable.

Britain may be his home, just as Canada is mine, and there is nothing contradictory about loving the country in which we live.

The mistake begins when gratitude for acceptance becomes confidence that acceptance is permanent, and confidence becomes forgetfulness.

That is the great Jewish illusion: that if we integrate enough, contribute enough, succeed enough and belong enough, history can no longer reach us.

Perhaps this time really is different. I hope with all my heart that it is. But after two thousand years, Jews should have learned one thing:

hope is not a survival strategy.

Israel is.

That was the lesson Miliband’s grandmother’s generation paid an unimaginable price to learn.

For Jews to forget it is foolish. For Ed Miliband, with his own family history, to forget it is unforgivable.