Did Corbyn question Israel’s right to exist?
Iranian TV clip triggers new Labour anti-Semitism row
JEREMy Corbyn has been accused of questioning Israel’s very right to exist in an interview on Iranian TV.
A 2011 clip of the then backbench MP has surfaced in which he said the view that Israel had a right to exist was an example of BBC ‘bias’.
Last night Labour Friends of Israel condemned the remark, which appears to contravene the international definition of antiSemitism which states it is anti-Semitic to ‘deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination’. Mr Corbyn also told Press TV that it was biased to describe Israel as a democracy.
The video emerged as Labour grandee Dame Margaret Hodge faced a barrage of online criti- cism – some of it anti-Semitic – from supporters of Mr Corbyn.
The peer, who is Jewish, had criticised the Labour leader’s decision not to adopt in full the definition of anti-Semitism as laid down by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Footage of Mr Corbyn’s interview with Press TV was tweeted yesterday by political blogger the Golem. The politician was filmed saying then BBC director-general Mark Thompson was under pressure from Israeli officials.
‘There is pressure on the BBC from probably Mark Thompson, who seems to me to have an agenda in this respect,’ he said.
‘There seems to be a great deal of pressure on the BBC from the Israeli government and the Israeli embassy, and they are very assertive towards all journalists and to the BBC itself – they challenge every single thing on reporting the whole time. I think there is a bias towards saying that Israel is a democracy in the Middle East, that Israel has a right to exist, that Israel has its security concerns.’
Reacting, Jewish Leadership Council chief executive Simon Johnson said the comments were at odds with Labour’s policy on Israel.
He said: ‘Sorry Mr Corbyn. Do you therefore think that Israel is not a democracy, does not have a right to exist and does not have security concerns? And that an organisation is biased if it does believe these things? Wow.’
Jennifer Gerber, director of Labour Friends of Israel, said: ‘The Labour Party is now defending Jeremy Corbyn peddling wild conspiracy theories and questioning Israel’s right to exist on Iranian state TV. For a party which aspires to be in government, this is not normal behaviour.’
Labour’s new code of conduct had omitted four IHRA examples of antiSemitism, though it was later suggested Mr Corbyn would adopt three
‘Not normal behaviour’
of those four tenets for its own antiSemitism definition. But Dame Margaret criticised his handling of the issue. And it emerged last night that members of the We Support Jeremy Corbyn Facebook group have attacked the peer. One member sarcastically wrote: ‘Please stay Margaret, we need the right kind of Jew in the party like you.’ Others described her as ‘scum’, ‘parasite’, ‘treacherous fraud’ and ‘bitch’.
yesterday Dame Margaret attacked the Labour leadership’s ‘bullying’ approach to critics – and said she was in ‘no doubt’ figures at the top of the party want to purge opponents of the leader.
She told the Evening Standard the party had become a ‘hostile environment for Jews’. Discussing Mr Corbyn’s comments from 2011, a Labour spokesman said the remarks were taken out of context and the leader supported a two-state solution. He added: ‘Jeremy was arguing that, despite... the lack of a Palestinian state, Israeli concerns and perspectives are more likely to appear prominently in news reporting than Palestinian ones.’