London Paper Says Miliband ‘Jewish Marxist’ Slam Wasn’t Anti-Semitic
Image by getty images
Daily Mail city editor Alex Brummer wrote that it was “deplorable” to accuse the British newspaper of anti-Semitism over an article on the late father of Labor Party leader Ed Miliband titled “The man who hated Britain.”
Brummer’s column appeared Saturday, several days after Miliband defended his father against the newspaper’s claim that he was an unpatriotic Jewish Marxist. The story questioned whether the Marxist views held by Ralph Miliband may have influenced Ed and his brother, David, a former British foreign secretary.
Ralph Miliband, a Jewish refugee from Belgium who fled to Britain before World War II, fought for Britain against the Nazis. He died in 1994.
Brummer said his father also was a Jewish refugee from the Nazis and that his grandparents died in Auschwitz.
“When it comes to anti-Semitism, I, as a practicing Jew in the orthodox tradition, regard myself as something of an expert with very sensitive antennae,” wrote Brummer, who has been at the Daily Mail for 13 years following several years at The Guardian, where he served as associate editor.
Brummer said in the column that he left the Guardian after feeling uneasy about how Israel was being portrayed in the left-leaning newspaper.
“The Mail’s reasons for scrutinizing the family background of Ed Miliband, in an article by Geoffrey Levy, cannot be attributed to the base notion of exposing his Jewishness. It was simply to try to explain why Ed Miliband was, as he declared (from a soapbox in my home town of Brighton a few days earlier), a ‘socialist,’ ” Brummer wrote.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
