Corbyn, Palestinians and Brexit: tempest in a teapot
It sounds like a tempest in a teapot, but it could bring down Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party — and that could end up meaning that Britain doesn’t leave the European Union after all.
It started last Saturday with a photograph of the Labour leader laying a wreath in a cemetery in Tunisia four years ago. He had laid it at a memorial to the Palestinian terrorists who planned the attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who never misses a chance to portray Europe as a cauldron of anti-Semitism, immediately tweeted: “The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorists who perpetrated the Munich massacre...deserves unequivocal condemnation from everybody — left, right, and everything in between.”
Corbyn replied at once on his own Twitter feed: “What deserves
Corbyn is also on the hard left of his party, which means that he never met an anti-imperial, anti-colonial, or anti-capitalist cause that he did not like. That’s how he found himself attending the ‘International Conference on Monitoring the Palestinian Political and Legal Situation in the Light of Israeli Aggression’ in Tunisia four years ago.
The conference was officially linked to the devastating Israeli air strike on Tunis in 1985, which killed 80 senior officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization, members of their families, and Tunisian civilians. Corbyn doesn’t speak either French or Arabic, and he presumably thought that’s what the wreathlaying was about. So, he took part in it.
In fact, the wreath was laid in memory of a different bunch of Palestinians, members of the Black September group, who had helped to plan the Munich outrage and were later assassinated by Israeli intelligence agents. Did Corbyn just get confused, or did the Tunisians deliberately mislead him?
What Corbyn should have done when the photo became public was to admit all, plead ignorance, and make a groveling apology. It would have been humiliating, but he would certainly have survived to fight again.
He didn’t do that. He is a very stubborn man, and he combined a lame semi-admission of his mistake — “I was present at that wreath-laying. I don’t think I was actually involved in it” — with further criticisms of current Israeli policy. And thereby he turned a little personal problem into a crisis for the Labour Party.
It is becoming plausible (though no more than that) to think that he might lose the Labour leadership — especially as it is becoming clear that he’s the main reason the party doesn’t enjoy a big lead in the opinion polls over the chaotic Conservative government led by Theresa May.
Which brings us to Brexit. The current stalemate in British politics, which has paralyzed negotiations for a sensible postBrexit relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, risks ending next March in a disaster in which the UK crashes out of the EU with no deal at all.
The stalemate is mostly due to the fact that both major parties in the UK are profoundly divided between pro- and anti-Brexit factions, but both parties have proBrexit leaders.
Recent opinion polls show a small but growing majority of voters would vote ‘Remain’ in a second referendum, but neither party will back such a referendum under the current leadership.
If Labour had a different leader, all that could change — and Corbyn is in deep trouble. All material in this publication is the property of SaltWire Network., and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior consent of the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for statements or claims by advertisers. The publisher shall not be liable for slight changes of typographical efforts that do not lessen the value of an advertisement or for omitting to publish an advertisement. Liability is strictly limited to the publication of the advertisement in any subsequent issue or the refund of any monies paid for that advertisement.