Corbyn’s extraordinary row with Israeli PM over terrorist tribute
Labour leader admits being present at wreath-laying ceremony but says he did not ‘think’ he was ‘involved’
JEREMY CORBYN was engaged in an unprecedented war of words with the Israeli prime minister last night over his visit to the graves of the Munich Olympics terrorists.
Benjamin Netanyahu said the Labour leader deserved “unequivocal condemnation from everyone” after Mr Corbyn claimed he was “present” but not “involved” in a ceremony honouring the Black September ringleaders.
In his first intervention in the antisemitism row that has engulfed Labour, Mr Netanyahu said Mr Corbyn should be denounced by “left, right and everything in between”.
He also directly accused him of a “comparison of Israel to the Nazis” as relations between Labour and the Jewish community sunk to an all-time low.
In an extraordinary response, Mr Corbyn launched an aggressive counter-attack accusing Mr Netanyahu of “false” claims and using his own words against him, saying: “What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children.”
Calls for Mr Corbyn to resign over his failure to tackle anti-semitism in the Labour Party reached new heights as his critics said the Labour leader himself was now the problem.
After a year of denials, Mr Corbyn was finally forced to admit yesterday he was in attendance at a ceremony to honour the leaders of Black September, the group that murdered 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Olympics.
It also emerged that Mr Corbyn stood next to a leading member of an active Palestinian terrorist group during the ceremony in 2014.
The Labour leader faced ridicule for saying he did not “think” he was “involved” in the wreath-laying ceremony, which came despite a series of pictures of him holding a large wreath next to the grave of Munich mastermind Salah Khalaf. He was also pictured praying next to the grave of Khalaf and three others regarded as ringleaders in the massacre.
Jewish Labour MPS accused Mr Corbyn of playing with semantics, telling him that attending a service and being involved are one and the same.
But it was his row with Mr Netanyahu that could now encourage other world leaders to address Mr Corbyn on the anti-semitism issue that is threatening to tear Labour apart.
Mr Netanyahu said on Twitter: “The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorists who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone – left, right and everything in between.”
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn responded by insisting he “did not lay any wreath at the graves of those alleged to have been linked to the Black September organisation or the 1972 Munich killings. He of course condemns that terrible attack, as he does the 1985 bombing”.
Mr Corbyn soon went further. In a response to Mr Netanyahu via Twitter, he said: “Israeli PM Netanyahu’s claims about my actions and words are false.
“What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children. The nation state law sponsored by Netanyahu’s government discriminates against Israel’s Palestinian minority. I stand with the tens of thousands of Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel demonstrating for equal rights at the weekend in Tel Aviv.”
Mr Corbyn had earlier changed his story about the visit to Tunis. He had “absolutely” denied being involved in the wreath-laying ceremony when The Daily Telegraph reported the story on its front page in May last year.
When the photographs of him at the
grave emerged over the weekend, widows of the Munich victims demanded an apology, but instead Labour went on the attack, claiming they had been “misled” because he “did not honour those responsible for the Munich killings” when he attended a “peace conference” in Tunisia.
Mr Corbyn’s aides repeatedly insisted that he had only been involved in a ceremony to commemorate the deaths of 47 people in an Israeli air force strike on a Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) base in Tunisia in 1985. However, Mr Corbyn finally admitted yesterday that he had been doing more than just attending a service for the bomb victims.
In a reference to the 1992 assassination of alleged Munich planner Atef Bseiso, Mr Corbyn said: “A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who were at the conference for those who were killed in Paris in 1992. I was present when it was laid. I don’t think I was involved in it.
“I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who’s died in every terrorist incident everywhere, because you have to end it. You cannot pursue peace by a cycle of violence.”
Luciana Berger, the Labour MP, retorted: “Being present is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association and support. There can also never be a ‘fitting memorial’ for terrorists. Where is the apology?”
Mark Regev, the Israeli Ambassador to the UK, tweeted a picture of Labour leader Harold Wilson’s message to Israel after the Munich massacre, when he said: “There are no words adequate to express the sense of outrage at so grievous and calculated an act of terrorism. On behalf of the Opposition in Parliament and the Labour Party I send our deepest sympathy.” Pictures of Mr Corbyn attending the ceremony at the Palestinian cemetery in Tunis online show him standing next to Maher Taher, a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a terrorist organisation by the EU, the US, Canada and Australia. Mr Corbyn has long been a supporter of the PLO, of which the PFLP is part.
Black September, the terrorist group that carried out the Munich massacre, was a terrorist offshoot of the PLO.
Joan Ryan, the chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, has written to Mr Corbyn warning that she is “deeply disturbed” by his attendance at the Tunis ceremony, and questioning why he had visited the Palestinian graveyard but had failed to take up a long-standing invitation to visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
She said: “The contrast between that failure and your trip to Tunis is a stark one, and I would suggest that you may wish to consider the message that it sends to the Jewish community in Britain and the people of Israel.”