Ben Cohen: His election numbers might be respectable, but his ideas about the world are far less so, even by France’s standards, where the extremes of left and right have always enjoyed solid electoral support.
Witness statements reveal that Jewish party members often do not feel comfortable attending Labour meetings “due to the intensity of animosity towards them.”
After being asked four times if he wanted to address antisemitism within the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn hedged, instead expressing his determination “that our society will be safe for people of all faiths.”
“Anti-Semitism is central to a wider debate about the kind of country we want to be,” it said. “To ignore it because Brexit looms larger is to declare that anti-Jewish prejudice is a price worth paying for a Labour government.”
Jonathan S. Tobin: The British party’s drift towards antisemitism wasn’t inevitable; it was the result of a centrist collapse. While their situation is different, Democrats could face a similar dilemma.
It features Rob Abrams, a Jewish anti-Zionist activist who in May 2018 led the Kaddish prayer in Parliament Square for 62 Palestinians killed on the Israel-Gaza border, at least 50 of whom were Hamas operatives.
The pictures show the leader of the British Labour Party walking in a 2009 march in Birmingham, England, where protesters held banners that described the Jewish state as “child killers” and “thirsty for blood,” while calling for a boycott of the Jewish state.
Melanie Phillips: The contemporary expression of the oldest hatred didn’t start with Jeremy Corbyn, and it won’t end with him. It has been around for decades and is endemic in progressive circles, not just in Britain but throughout the West.
“This message expresses support and solidarity with the Palestinian people and their inalienable rights to freedom, independence and self-determination,” read the statement. “It also condemns the ongoing occupation and its crimes against our people, and reflects an advanced moral and political position worthy of all praise and thanks.”
The Community Security Trust, a London-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting Jews in the United Kingdom, announced a record high of 1,652 antisemitic incidents in 2018—an increase of 16 percent over the previous year.
A speech by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2013 was the “most offensive statement by a senior British politician since Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech,” said former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations and there Commonwealth Lord Jonathan Sacks.
“Jeremy Corbyn has lied, distracted, tried to twist the definition of antisemitism to exclude his past conduct and issued false apologies when pressure mounted,” said Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism.
The photos are unmerciful: British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn prays with his hands upwards before the grave of Atef Bseiso, the mastermind behind the 1972 massacre at Munich Olympics.
