Joint List MK backs Corbyn for UK leader
Anyone in favor of a Palestinian state should support Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Joint List MK Yousef Jabareen said on Tuesday, bucking the trend of Israeli lawmakers speaking out against him.
“Opposition to Apartheid is not antisemitic, rather the opposite,” Jabareen wrote on Twitter ahead of Thursday’s election in the UK.
While Corbyn is a sharp opponent of Israel, multiple credible claims of antisemitism have been leveled against him that are not matters of specific policies. Rather, they delegitimize Jews and the Jewish state. These include laying a wreath on the grave of Black September terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics; welcoming Islamic Movement Northern Branch head Sheikh Raed Salah to Parliament after he was convicted of spreading the blood libel; and saying that
Zionists – over 90% of British Jews in some polls – “don’t understand British irony.” He has also criticized the BBC for being biased in favor of Israel’s existence.
Under Corbyn’s leadership, Labour has ignored dozens of antisemitism complaints about the party’s officials as a matter of policy.
Still, Jabareen argued that members of “the Right, here and there, are waging a campaign of lies and incitement.”
Last year, Jabareen, MK Ahmed Tibi and others in the Joint List wrote a letter to The Guardian praising Corbyn and saying he fights antisemitism, while calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a racist.
Others on the Israeli Left distances themselves from Corbyn.
“Of course he’s an antisemite. Is there any question?” Democratic Union MK Stav Shaffir said.
Also on Tuesday, Likud leadership hopeful MK Gideon Sa’ar slammed Corbyn.
“He makes his anti-Israel positions clear,” Sa’ar said. “I truly hope he won’t win the election. I care about the Jewish community of the UK, which is very worried these days.”
In recent days, Foreign Minister Israel Katz and Blue and White Party co-chairman Yair Lapid have also spoken out against Corbyn.