Damnedbyhisownwords

TThat suggests Jewish misgivings about Labour and its leader that even well-liked individuals could not overcome. This is the irony that I struggled to explain to curious observers from abroad: Labour’s first Jewish leader had a Jewish problem. Jews liked him less than they had liked either of his predecessors. Why? I suspect the problem went back to the beginning. Some have suggested that his run for the leadership against his older brother offended an ancient Jewish sensibility. I doubt that. You can make a decent case that, on the contrary, Judaism is the religion of the younger brother: think of how Jacob edged out Esau, how Moses took precedence over Aaron. No, the die was cast within a few days of Ed’s victory. In his first speech as leader, Ed mentioned only one foreign policy issue. Not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not Iran — but the Gaza flotilla affair. Even those who might have shared his criticism felt uncomfortable at the implied notion that Israel was the most troublesome trouble-spot in the world. They felt singled out. That worry deepened during his five years at the top.

Plenty of Jews didn’t like the hard line Miliband took during Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 2014 offensive against Gaza. Others chafed when he whipped Labour MPs to vote for recognition of a Palestinian state in the same year. To many Jews, this felt like an unhappy contrast with the effusive pro-Zionism of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

More deeply, I think many Jews saw in Ed Miliband a type they recognised and didn’t much like: the leftie Jewish anti-Zionist. Never mind that Miliband himself insisted that he had a deep attachment to Israel, where he has close family, and even once described himself as a Zionist (though that statement was hastily walked back). Somehow, he made Jews suspicious that, when it came to Israel, his heart was not in the same place as theirs.

But I wonder if it went deeper still. Plenty of analysts say Ed’s real problem was not that he was a geek, but that he seemed somehow fake, carrying himself and speaking in a way that suggested strenuous media training and which didn’t quite ring true. I suspect Jews detected a version of that in Ed early on: that, Jewishly, he just didn’t seem comfortable in his own skin.

That’s hardly his fault: he’s spoken about the limited Jewish upbringing his parents gave him. But it left an unexpected legacy. It meant he was never fully trusted — even by those who might have been expected to embrace one of their own.

Many saw in Miliband an anti-Zionist type they disliked

Jonathan Freedland is the Executive Editor of the Guardian