Corbyn was filmed endorsing BDS in 2015
Just one day after a photo was published of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn holding a wreath near the grave of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre’s mastermind, footage from 2015 was released that showed him endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Corbyn said in the footage that BDS was “part and parcel of a legal process that has to be adopted,” during a conference in Belfast months before he assumed party leadership.
Corbyn has maintained he opposes a blanket boycott of Israel, supporting instead only boycotting produce from Israeli settlements.
“Jeremy is not in favor of a comprehensive or blanket boycott,” a spokesperson for Corbyn told The Guardian in December. “He doesn’t support BDS. He does support targeted action aimed at illegal settlements and occupied territories.”
In the footage filmed in Belfast, he was asked, “Can the panel give hope to the people of Palestine by supporting the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel?”
“I think the boycott campaign, divestment campaign, is part and parcel of a legal process that has to be adopted,” Corbyn responded. He later said, “I believe that sanctions against Israel, because of its breach of the trade agreement, are the appropriate way of promoting [the] peace process.”
The footage was published in 2015 by Sinn Féin, the extremist nationalist Northern Irish political party that hosted Corbyn in Belfast. Corbyn, who in 2009 hosted a visit to Britain’s parliament by Hamas and Hezbollah politicians, calling them his “friends,” was then an outlier in Labour for his radical politics. He was widely seen as having slim chances of leading the movement.
David Hirsh, a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and author of the book Contemporary Left Antisemitism, on Thursday posted the video on his Facebook page.
(JTA)