Why are these vile anti- Semitic posts on your Facebook page, Mr Corbyn?
JEREMY CORBYN was plunged into a new anti-Semitism row last night after The Mail on Sunday discovered that his official Facebook page is littered with vile slurs against Jews.
Among more than a dozen shocki n g p o s t s wer e c l a i ms that ‘supremacist Jews’ have taken over Labour and are playing ‘victims’ by talking about being ‘massacred by Hitler’. Others accused Jews of being the ‘biggest problem facing the world for centuries’ and said the ‘Zionist lobby’ controlled British politics.
Last night Jewish leaders reacted with horror to the ‘poisonous’ posts and said Mr Corbyn’s failure to remove them exposed his claims to be tackling the problem as ‘hot air’.
A spokesman for the Community Security Trust – a charity which campaigns against anti-Semitism – said: ‘Some of these comments contain shocking anti-Semitism. Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to drive antiSemitism out of the Labour Party. We welcome this commitment, and a fitting place to start would be on his own Facebook page.’
The comments were left below a message Mr Corbyn posted about meeting Jewish leaders last Tuesday following months of accusations that he had failed to tackle anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
In recent weeks he has been exposed as being a member of Facebook groups where a large number of anti-Semitic comments have been left. And in the Commons, Labour MPs Ruth Smeeth and Luciana Berger – who are both Jewish – tearfully revealed that they had received death threats as well as vile anti-Semitic abuse. The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council branded Tuesday’s meeting ‘disappointing’. Mr Corbyn posted on Tuesday evening: ‘I am grateful… for a positive and constructive meeting. I am absolutely committed to rooting out anti-Semitism from our party and our society.’
Hundreds of comments were left, more than a dozen of which were anti-Semitic. They remained on the Facebook page throughout the week without being deleted by Mr Corbyn or his office, even though such action takes only a moment.
One message, from a Frank Dodd, read: ‘What this is really is a Jewish supremacist takeover of the Labour Party. Anti-Semitism is a Jewish hoax. This was to purge all people who are concerned about the huge concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a very small number of racial supremacist Jews.’
Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, said: ‘The fact that so many poisonous comments still remain under Corbyn’s Facebook post show his claims to be tackling anti-Semitism seriously are so much hot air.’
The CST added: ‘We call on the Labour leader to not only delete all anti-Semitic comments, but to investigate whether any of them were made by Labour members, and, if so, to expel those responsible.’
Labour MP Louise Ellman said: ‘These are appalling and should have been removed immediately. If it turns out that these comments were made by Labour Party members, they should be disciplined.’
A Labour spokesman said: ‘Jeremy Corbyn is a militant opponent of anti - Semitism. Those who express anti-Semitic views or attitudes do not do so in his name.
‘If these anti-Semitic commenters are found to be Labour members, they will be investigated and appropriate action will be taken.’