Anti-Semitism is “repulsive,” former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband stated Tuesday, amid an ongoing controversy surrounding rampant hatred of Jews in the country’s Labour party. 

“It should not be the Jewish community’s fight alone. It is everyone’s fight, everyone’s responsibility,” Miliband stated, speaking at a dinner for the UK Jewish group, the Board of Deputies. The response, he added, “can’t be to turn away. It must be to engage, not to ignore.”

He added an imperative to “fight and defeat” anti-Semitic ideas. 

Miliband, himself Jewish, served in multiple senior positions in the British government from 2002-2010. He ran for Labour party leadership that year, losing by a narrow margin to his brother Ed; many speculate he will run again during the next party election. 

His comments surface following multiple anti-Semitic incidents from Labour councilors and MPs over the past several weeks. 

In March, Vicki Kirby, a party organizer banned for calling Hitler “a Zionist god” and ridiculing Jews for having “big noses,” was readmitted into the party. 

More recently, Bob Campbell, a party activist, was criticized for suggesting that Israel was behind the ISIS terror organization; days later, a former mayor of Bradford and Labour member, Khadim Hussain, posted comments on Facebook decrying Holocaust education and alleging that Israel had armed ISIS.

The comments have sparked a massive backlash from across the political and religious spectrum, with not only the Board of Deputies demanding action, but a call to renounce the statements from the former Archbishop of Canterbury as well. 

After weeks of silence, Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn called anti-Semitism “abhorrent” Sunday, promising to eject offenders from the party. But Corbyn himself is infamous for being a Hamas and Hezbollah sympathizer, calling both terror groups his “friends.”