ISRAEL RIPS U.K.’S CORBYN ON TERRORISM

At ceremony for men linked to Munich killings

LONDON • British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn — who has spent the summer lurching from one crisis to another over allegations of anti-semitism — acknowledged Monday that he was present at a wreath-laying to Palestinians allegedly linked to the murder of 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Following the revelation, Corbyn became engaged in an unprecedented war of words with the Israeli prime minister.

Benjamin Netanyahu said Corbyn deserved “unequivocal condemnation from everyone” after the Labour leader claimed he was “present” but not “involved” in a ceremony honouring the Black September ringleaders.

In his first intervention in the anti-semitism row that has engulfed Labour, Netanyahu said Corbyn should be denounced by “left, right and everything in between.”

He also directly accused him of a “comparison of Israel to the Nazis” as relations between Labour and the Jewish community sunk to an all-time low.

In an extraordinary response, Corbyn launched an aggressive counter-attack accusing Netanyahu of “false” claims and using his own words against him, saying: “What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children.”

After a year of denials, Corbyn was finally forced to admit Monday that he was in attendance at a ceremony to honour the leaders of Black September, the group that murdered 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Olympics.

It also emerged that Corbyn stood next to a leading member of an active Palestinian terrorist group during the ceremony in 2014.

The Labour leader faced ridicule for saying he did not “think” he was “involved” in the wreath-laying ceremony, which came despite a series of pictures of him holding a large wreath next to the grave of Munich mastermind Salah Khalaf. He was also pictured praying next to the grave of Khalaf and three others regarded as ringleaders in the massacre.

Corbyn had earlier changed his story about the visit to Tunis. He had “absolutely” denied being involved in the wreath-laying ceremony when The Daily Telegraph reported the story on its front page in May last year.

When the photographs of him at the grave emerged over the weekend, widows of the Munich victims demanded an apology, but instead Labour went on the attack, claiming they had been “misled” because he “did not honour those responsible for the Munich killings” when he attended a “peace conference” in Tunisia.

Corbyn’s aides repeatedly insisted that he had only been involved in a ceremony to commemorate the deaths of 47 people in an Israeli air force strike on a Palestinian Liberation Organisation base in Tunisia in 1985.

However, Corbyn finally admitted Monday that he had been doing more than just attending a service for the bomb victims.

In a reference to the 1992 assassination of alleged Munich planner Atef Bseiso, Corbyn said: “A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who were at the conference for those who were killed in Paris in 1992. I was present when it was laid. I don’t think I was involved in it.”

A Jewish Labour MP accused Corbyn of playing with semantics. Luciana Berger said, “Being present is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association and support. There can also never be a ‘fitting memorial’ for terrorists. Where is the apology?”

The fresh controversy comes only a day after Sajid Javid, the British Home Secretary, called on Corbyn to resign over Labour’s spiralling anti-semitism crisis, adding that the “leader of any other major political party” would have been forced out over a similar scandal.

Corbyn has faced a string of anti-semitism controversies including hosting a 2010 panel where Israelis were compared to Nazis and that in 2012 he defended an artist’s freedom of speech, but failed to condemn a London mural that depicted Jewish bankers playing monopoly on a board balanced on the bent backs of workers.

Corbyn has strenuously denied any anti-semitism on his part.

But writing in the Guardian newspaper, Corbyn said, “I do acknowledge there is a real problem that Labour is working to overcome.”