Hard-Left group led by Corbyn played down massacre

A HARD-LEFT campaign group led by Jeremy Corbyn published an article that played down the Munich Massacre.

The article, on the Stop the War Coalition website, claimed Palestinian terrorists had no intention of killing the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches taken hostage at the 1972 Olympics.

And it blamed Israel for provoking the deaths by refusing to cede to the terrorists’ demands to swap the hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

The piece was published in February 2014, just a year before Mr Corbyn became Labour leader.

At the time he was chairman of the Stop the War Coalition, a position he had take up in September 2011. He only stood down after his election as leader. Just months after the article, Mr Corbyn visited the cemetery in Tunisia where members of Black September – the terror group which carried out the Munich attack – are buried.

Written by prominent anti-Israel activist Alison Weir, the article attempts to justify the hostage-taking by saying the deaths should be placed in the ‘context’ of previous decades of conflict.

It also describes the athletes as ‘preferred’ victims – claiming they only received such prominent coverage because they were on one side of the Middle East conflict.

Miss Weir’s article is headlined: ‘Missing facts of the 1972 Munich Olympics’ massacre: Israelis weren’t the only victims’.

Laying out the ‘context’ of the hostage-taking, it states: ‘Just 23 years before the Olympic incident, Israel had been created through ethnically cleansing much of the indigenous Palestinian population.

‘The violence continued, and beginning in 1968 Israeli forces repeatedly savaged 150 or more towns and villages in south Lebanon alone. By the time of the Munich Olympics, Israel held hundreds of prisoners in its notorious prison system.

‘It is widely known, but rarely stated, that the goal of the Munich hostage-taking was not to kill them; it was to return the athletes to Israel in return for Israel returning its Palestinian prisoners.

‘Many of these prisoners were also young people.

‘Israel is not known for its merciful treatment of those it dislikes.’

‘When the Israeli government refused to consider an exchange, the German police, with the Mossad at hand, were pushed into an ill-planned rescue attempt in which some of the hostages (no one knows how many) were killed accidentally by the attackers.’

It is not certain, as Miss Weir suggests, that any of the hostages were killed by German police.

Her piece continued: ‘The day after the botched and unnecessary “rescue”, Israel launched heavy air attacks against Lebanon and Syria, killing between 200 and 500 Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians.’

Miss Weir also criticised the Washington Post for publishing a piece about russian Jews remembering the murder of the athletes.

‘It would have been valuable...to tell a little about what the Munich incident was about – and about all the tragic victims of violence connected to the event, not just the 11 preferred ones,’ she said.

Last night a Labour source said: ‘Jeremy Corbyn condemns the Munich Massacre just as he condemns the 1985 airstrike on PLO’s headquarters.’

‘Israelis were not the only victims’