LABOUR: NOW IT’S CIVIL WAR
Corbyn forced into apology after hosting anti-Zionist speakers His No2 McDonnell tries to make peace ... but HE praised same group, too
LABOUR was on the brink of civil war last night over anti-Semitism.
The party endured a fevered day of briefing and counter-briefing following the revelation that Jeremy Corbyn hosted an event comparing the Israeli government to the Nazis.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell went on TV yesterday to claim that Labour’s crisis had ‘shaken him to the core’.
But last night it emerged that Mr McDonnell had himself praised the same controversial group which organised the meeting chaired by Mr Corbyn.
The Shadow Chancellor tabled a Commons motion ten years ago to support the launch of the International Jewish AntiZionist Network, or IJAN, which demands the end of Israel and accuses Zionists of collusion with Nazi Germany.
The motion praised the group for speaking out to ‘discredit Israel’s attempts to suppress criticism with false accusations of anti-Semitism’, and accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and having ‘apartheid laws’.
Mr Corbyn was yesterday forced to issue an unprecedented apology about his decision to host the IJAN event on Holocaust Memorial Day in 2010.
Last night new footage surfaced of the Labour leader on Iranian state TV praising the release of Hamas terrorists in 2012.
And in a further sign of chaos, the proCorbyn group Momentum told its supporters not to vote for an activist who was recorded last month accusing Jewish ‘ Trump fanatics’ of making of antiSemitism claims. The movement said Peter Willsman was no longer on its slate for elections to the Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee.
The situation got so bad that Labour MP Stephen Kinnock tweeted yesterday: ‘This is now a full blown crisis for our party.’ On a dark day for Labour:
MPs and Jewish groups rejected Mr Corbyn’s apology for chairing the IJAN meeting, saying the decision lacked ‘normal decency’;
A Holocaust survivor who attended the event accused Mr Corbyn of walking around pointing out those he wanted removed;
It was revealed that both Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell signed a motion to propose that Holocaust Memorial Day be renamed Genocide Memorial Day;
A councillor resigned from the Labour Party after he said Hitler ‘would have had a solution to the Israel problem’.
Yesterday Mr McDonnell attempted to put an end to the scandal by making a public statement.
He said he wanted the row sorted by next month’s Labour conference, adding: ‘None of us fail to appreciate the way this has upset people, including ourselves. It has really shaken us to the core but we will resolve it.’ But last night it emerged that Mr McDonnell was the primary sponsor of an Early Day Motion tabled in October 2008 that praised IJAN for giving voice ‘ to the great and growing number of Jewish people worldwide who … condemn Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people’.
IJAN’s founding charter states: ‘Zionism dishonours the persecution and genocide of European Jews by using their memory to justify and perpetuate European racism and colonialism.’
And it adds: ‘ Zionism … endorses the sexist European anti- Semitic imagery of the effeminate and weak “diaspora Jew” and counters it with a violent and militarist “new Jew”.’
It also states that there is a ‘ long history of Zionist collusion’ with repressive and violent regimes such as Nazi Germany. It describes Israel as ‘an atomic bomb that should be urgently dismantled’.
Last night a Labour critic of Mr McDonnell said: ‘ This shows [his] true colours. The fact he can lie so completely and convincingly is deeply troubling.’
A Labour spokesman said: ‘ John was welcoming the creation of an organisation that represented an important strand of radical Jewish political campaigning. He didn’t and doesn’t endorse all of the views expressed in their charter.’
The IJAN meeting Mr Corbyn chaired in 2010 was part of a UK tour called Never Again for Anyone – Auschwitz to Gaza. The talk was called The Misuse of the Holocaust for Political Purposes, and was delivered by Hajo Meyer, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz and a passionate antiZionist. He repeatedly compared the Nazi regime and Israeli politicians.
Labour MP John Mann yesterday attacked Mr Corbyn’s decision to chair the 2010 IJAN meeting, saying it went against ‘normal decency’.
Campaign Against Antisemitism chairman Gideon Falter was scathing about Mr Corbyn’s ‘mealy mouthed’ apology for chairing the IJAN event , saying it ‘rings utterly hollow’.
‘Effeminate and weak’
IF Jeremy Corbyn had set out deliberately to cause maximum offence to the Jewish community and relatives of victims of the Holocaust, he could hardly have achieved it more effectively.
The date was Holocaust Memorial Day, 2010, and the setting was the Palace of Westminster. Mr Corbyn, then a backbencher, was hosting a meeting, part of a UK tour obscenely called: ‘Never Again for Anyone – Auschwitz to Gaza.’
That title alone – equating Palestinian casualties in Gaza with the six million Jewish victims of Hitler’s industrialised slaughter and torture – should have persuaded anyone with an ounce of moral sense to boycott the event in disgust.
Yet far from protesting when speakers likened Israelis to Nazis – let alone expressing contrition for hosting such an offensive gathering – Mr Corbyn is said to have walked through the room, ordering the eviction of Jews who did protest.
Only when challenged about it now – with Britain at last waking up to the full horror of hard-Left anti-Semitism – does he issue a half-hearted apology (his first for anything he has said or done personally).
‘In the past,’ he says, ‘in pursuit of justice for the Palestinian people and peace in Israel/ Palestine, I have on occasion appeared on platforms with people whose views I completely reject. I apologise for the concerns and anxiety that this has caused.’
So it was in pursuit of ‘peace’, was it, that he chaired a virulently anti-Israeli meeting on Holocaust Memorial Day – the same motive he now claims for his decades-long flirtation with IRA murderers? Does he take voters for fools?
Nor should anyone be deceived by his henchman John McDonnell’s attempt to distance himself from his party’s antiSemitism by claiming the row has ‘shaken Labour to its core’.
As the Mail reveals today, this is a man who backed an obnoxious Commons motion hailing the launch of a group that called for ‘dismantling’ Israel. It also accused Zionists of racism and declared: ‘The Holocaust against Jewish people is being used to perpetrate other atrocities.’
No wonder Mr Corbyn is so reluctant for Labour to endorse the definition of antiSemitism drawn up by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. If he accepted it in full, he’d have to sack himself – along with most of his closest allies.
With every revelation, the true nature of the Labour leader and his bigoted cronies becomes more apparent. God save this country from a Corbyn-led government.