His Parliament meeting with Holocaust denier – which he didn’t disclose
‘Jeremy always said hello’
JEREMY Corbyn held a private meeting in Parliament with a Holocaust denier – but failed to disclose it during an inquiry into anti-Semitism, it has been revealed.
He faced accusations that he misled MPs when he told them he had stopped attending events with Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR) on learning its leader claimed the Holocaust never happened.
Paul Eisen, a notorious anti-Semite, has been open about his Holocaust denial since at least 2005. In 2008, he published the essay ‘My life as a Holocaust denier’.
But in 2014, the year before he became Labour leader, Mr Corbyn met DYR members at Parliament. They included official Gill Kaffash, who was banned from the Labour Party two years later for Holocaust revisionism.
Giving evidence to the Commons home affairs select committee in 201 , Mr Corbyn claimed he stopped attending DYR events when he learned of Mr Eisen’s views. He made no mention of the meeting in Parliament two years before.
DYR stages annual commemorations to the village of Deir Yassin, where 100 Palestinians were killed by Zionist paramilitaries in 1948. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, of which Mr Corbyn is a patron, disavowed Mr Eisen and DYR in 2007 due to Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. But the Labour leader attended DYR public events for a further six years and met members privately a year later.
He posed for a photo in Portcullis House with Omar Shalabi, who was imprisoned in Israel for encouraging terror attacks online, and Thair Anis, who praised terrorists as ‘martyrs’. It is believed to have been taken by Miss Kaffash, who confirmed the meeting. Another photograph the same day shows the DYR delegation at the Palestinian embassy.
Mr Eisen appears but it is not known if he met Mr Corbyn. Mr Eisen has written on his blog about the support Mr Corbyn gave him when he felt ‘despised’ by mainstream society. He wrote: ‘During the time when I felt so marginalised and isolated... Jeremy always said hello.’
When asked in 201 by Tory MP Victoria Atkins, then a member of the home affairs committee, Mr Corbyn said: ‘[Mr Eisen] used to hold an annual event called Deir Yassin Remembered, and I indeed attended some of those... events.’
He added: ‘He later produced these [Holocaust denial] views, with which I totally and profoundly disagreed, and I let them know. I have not attended anything else since.’
But Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said: ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s association with the appalling DYR group is made even worse by the fact that he may have misled MPs.’