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British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
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LONDON (EJP)---British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Sunday David Cameron’s decision to support Polish Michal Kaminski as chairman of the new anti-federalist Conservative political grouping in the European Parliament had provoked "real cause for concern" among Britain's Jewish community.
Kaminski, a Polish politician who is accused of anti-Semitism because of his extreme-right background, was recently appointed leader of the European Conservatives and Reformist Group of which 25 members of the British Tories are members.
Cameron, the leader of the Conservatives, who supported Kaminski’s appointment, had caused controversy in June with his decision to leave the European People's Party, the largest group, in the European Parliament, and form the new anti-federalist grouping.
Former Conservative MEP Edward McMillan-Scott, who accused Kaminski of being the face of "respectable fascism", was kicked out of the Tories last month for opposing the appointment of the Polish politician.
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avid Miliband, who is the son of Jewish refugees of the Holocaust, stated that Cameron had "driven his party to the right wing of European politics."
He told The Independent newspaper: "It has given key communities in Britain real cause for concern. Against the best advice of foreign leaders and British business, he drove the Tories out of the mainstream and into the right-wing margins of Europe."
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Polish politician Michal Kaminski, chairman of the new European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament, has denied claims that he is an anti-Semite and that he opposed in 2001 an apology by then Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski for the massacre of hundreds of Jews in Jedwabne in July 1941.
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But Michal Kaminski , who is a member of the Polish Law and Justice party, has denied claims that he is an anti-Semite and that he opposed an apology by then Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski in 2001 for the massacre of hundreds of Jews in Jedwabne in July 1941.
In an interview with EJP this week, Kaminski acknowledged that some Poles have been involved in the WWII anti-Jewish pogrom while disputing assumptions that anti-Semitism is an inherent Polish characteristic.
"At the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, there are more non-Jewish Polish citizens honoured for risking their lives to save individual Jews from their darkest hours than any other nation," he said.
He claimed that has spent "a lifetime of work supporting Israel and the Jewish community in Poland."
"My work combating anti-Semitism alongside the work I have done with the ‘European Friends of Israel’ has been very important to me", Kaminski said.
The 55-strong European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) political group includes British Conservatives, plus MEPs from Poland, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Belgium and Hungary.
Michal Kaminski is the first politician from an Eastern European country to lead a political group in the EU assembly.
Another Pole, Jerzy Buzek, from the European People’s Party, was elected new president of the Parliament in June.