British Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the contribution of the Jewish community in the United Kingdom, serving as a model of how to integrate successfully into a country, during a Hanukkah reception at Downing Street in London last week.
“When I think of the Jewish community in Britain I think of a community that has been unbelievably brilliant at integrating with our country and making an enormous contribution to it, while of course at the same time wanting to maintain important issues of religion and culture,” Cameron remarked.
“You are in many ways the model of how to integrate successfully into a country, and the pledge I make as Prime Minister is those aspects of religion, such as Shechita, are always safe while I am your Prime Minister,” he proclaimed.
Cameron quipped, “I understand there are about 26 different ways to spell Chanukah – but there really is only one meaning, which is dedication.”
The prime minister, who’s running for reelection in may, 2015, went on to tout his support for Israel, not mentioning his Labor rival Ed Miliband, who was critical of Israel’s summertime Gaza operation.
“Britain is a friend of Israel, a good, a candid, a trusted friend of Israel, and that is how, as long as I’m Prime Minister, it will always stay,” Cameron said. “There is no moral equivalence between an Israeli government that wants to defend its people and its territory against attack, and terrorists that want to kill as many people as they can with the weapons and the bombs and the missiles that they throw over Israel’s borders. And this country will always be a staunch friend of Israel.”
Cameron, who just returned from an emotional visit to Auschwitz, pledged to make sure “that we continue to commemorate and educate people about what happened in the Holocaust… And I’m determined we’ll do that.”
Via Number10gov
