LONDON, Feb 18: British Prime Minister Tony Blair tried on Friday to win back Jewish voters angered by Labour Party campaign advertisements they found anti-Semitic in their portrayal of Conservative opposition leaders.
In an interview with Friday's edition of the Jewish Chronicle, Mr Blair pledged to "never, ever, ever" attack Michael Howard, the leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, on his Jewishness.
On Feb 1, the Labour Party withdrew from its website two campaign advertisements that had sparked protests from members of the Jewish community. In one of them, Mr Howard appeared dangling a pocket watch as if trying to hypnotize the viewer, which critics said alluded to Charles Dickens's Fagin in "Oliver Twist" or William Shakespeare's Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice".
Both characters are denounced as offensive Jewish stereotypes. The miserly Fagin teaches orphaned boys to pick pockets and steal for him, while Shylock is the merciless moneylender who demands a pound of flesh from a merchant who defaults on his debt.
Another campaign advertisement showed the faces of Howard and his finance spokesman Oliver Letwin, who is also Jewish, imposed on pigs with wings, which Jewish groups said was insulting because pork is considered unclean according to Jewish dietary law.
Mr Blair said he had not seen the posters personally before their release and that they were "not intended to cause any offence to anyone in the Jewish community". He told the paper: "I've been a very, very strong supporter of the Jewish community and of Israel, and will always be so."
When asked if Labour would draw attention to Howard's Jewishness in order to attract Muslim support, he replied: "The idea that I would allow anybody to make such a charge is outrageous. It's untrue...
"If you look at what I do, I attack Michael Howard politically. I would never, ever ever attack him on that basis," Blair said in the interview. The prime minister defended his party's attitude towards the Jewish community.
He said his government had introduced Holocaust Memorial Day, adding, "I think you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who's dealt with us at an official level in the Jewish community who has not seen us as extremely sensitive to the concerns that the Jewish community have.
"We have been staunch supporters of Israel, staunch defenders of the Jewish community and aggressively against any form of racism." Blair repeated his call for London Mayor Ken Livingstone to apologize to a Jewish reporter from the Evening Standard whom he had compared to a concentration camp guard.
The prime minister said the mayor "should have withdrawn the comment immediately" once he realized the journalist was Jewish. "I'm sure that is what in truth he wants to do. Well, he should do it.
"The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which was founded in 1760 and calls itself the voice of British Jewry, estimates there are around 285,000 Jews in Britain. -AFP
