How Corbyn met friends of Hamas in Parliament
JEREMY Corbyn welcomed a group of Hamas-linked extremists to Parliament, including an Islamic leader who called for attacks on the Royal Navy.
The meeting, just six months before Mr Corbyn became Labour leader, featured another speaker who said he wanted to be a suicide bomber.
Only yesterday it was revealed Mr Corbyn met Hamas officials on a trip to the West Bank in 2010. He faces a probe into whether he broke parliamentary rules for not declaring the visit, which was also attended by his spin doctor Seumas Milne and organised by the Middle East Monitor – a pro-Hamas group behind the meeting in Parliament.
The latest controversy centres on a 2015 event in the Lords at which Mr Corbyn is pictured by flanked by Daud Abdullah, a Hamas-linked figure who called for a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day. Abdullah also signed a pro-Hamas letter which allegedly called for violence against Israel, prompting calls for his resignation from the Muslim Council of Britain – and another saying the Royal Navy should be attacked if it tried to stop weapons being smuggled to terror groups in Gaza.
Mr Corbyn – currently on a four-day visit to Scotland – also met Azzam Tamimi, said to be Hamas’s special envoy to Britain, who has said he would be prepared to blow himself up in a suicide attack. ‘Sacrificing myself for Palestine is a noble cause,’ he once told the BBC. ‘It is the straight way to pleasing my God and I would do it if I had the opportunity.’
Also part of the delegation was Zaher al-Birawi, a close associate of the Hamas leadership who has posed for pictures with its chief Ismail Haniyeh.
Mohammed Sawalha, who represented Hamas in a visit to Russia last year, was another of those present. The revelations will add to pressure on Mr Corbyn, who is struggling to contain a row over his appearance at a 2014 wreathlaying ceremony in Tunis near the graves of Palestinian terrorists linked to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes.
The two-hour seminar on ‘the politics of Gaza’s reconstruction’ was hosted by crossbench peer John Montagu. Its chairman was Karl Sabbagh, a British Palestinian writer. The event highlights the depth of the Labour leader’s connections with Hamas – a designated terror group in Britain and most Western countries. Mr Corbyn notoriously called the organisation his ‘friends’ in 2009, something he later said he regretted.
Tory MP Andrew Percy, vicechairman of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-Semitism, said: ‘This is yet further evidence Jeremy Corbyn’s claims to be a supporter of peace are just rubbish. Standing alongside those who have called for attacks on the brave men and women who defend our democracy is frankly sickening. He should be ashamed.’
Last night, a Labour spokesman said: ‘Jeremy Corbyn has a long and principled record of solidarity with the Palestinian people and engaging with actors in the conflict to support peace and justice in the Middle East. That is the right thing to do.’
‘He should be ashamed’