MILIBAND: OUR REFUGEE DUTY
FORMER FOREIGN SECRETARY David Mi lib and has highlighted the message of Pesach — “the greatest single liberation drama of all time” — to urge understanding of the current refugee crisis.
The head of the New York-based International Rescue Committee, which provides humanitarian aid to victims of conflict, addressed 450 guest sat the Board of Deputies dinner in London on Tuesday.
The turnout represented one of the largest attendances for the annual event in recent years.
Mr Miliband said there was “a global crisis, a true exodus of people fleeing violence that is straining all societies, from Kenya to Afghanistan to Jordan to the very heart of Europe.
“The Jewish people know the story of flight all too well, but more important, the Jewish people also have profound lessons to teach about rebuilding.”
British Jewry, he said, was a community which had always known what it stood for. “Out of ashes, hope; out of hatred, understanding; and out of exclusion, integration.”
He praised the “remarkable visit” of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis to a refugee camp in Greece last autumn, saying that the rabbi had become “a voice of shared humanity for those of all faiths and none. He understood the vast human tragedy unfolding in front of us”.
Recalling that the IRC had been founded by Albert Einstein after he arrived in the United States as a refugee from Europe, Mr Miliband said this was a reminder that “we, all of us, are the heirs of a moral revolution which insists that in every human being there burns a moral flame which if nurtured can defeat the forces of darkness, in tolerance and hatred”.
Caring for all in society was a communal duty, he explained. “It is this duty which has allowed the Jewish community to be held in such extraordinary esteem in Britain — and to become one of our country’s most significant moral voices,” he declared.
“The long march to freedom is never over, but Anglo Jewry is testimony to its possibility, its rewards and its responsibilities.”
Earning a standing ovation, he concluded: “That, friends, is the spirit in which I extend to you all my own personal wishes forc hags am each, and hope that this festival of freedom can inspire us all to promote dignity and decency across the world.”
Israel’s new Ambassador to Britain Mark Regev, making his communal debut after starting in the role last week, also drew on the theme of freedom.
He was roundly applauded when he said: “We can all take great pride in the freedoms that Israel guarantees to all its citizens, Jew and non-Jew alike.”
Israel stood as a “beacon of freedom and pluralism” in a region plagued by violence and extremism, where militant Islamists sought “to return our planet to a pre-medieval dark age”, he added.