Disclose talks with extremists, Corbyn told
Labour leader must share record of contacts to prove he is a man of peace, says senior diplomat
JEREMY CORBYN’S account of his meetings with representatives of Hamas and other Islamist organisations appears “deliberately evasive” and “deeply troubling”, and the Labour leader should release records of talks to prove he is “the man of peace he claims to be”, according to a senior diplomat.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Sir John Jenkins, a former British ambassador who led a review of the Muslim Brotherhood network in 2015, said if Mr Corbyn failed to disclose details, he risked being seen as a “delusional, virtue-signalling, right-on poseur”.
In a highly unusual intervention – his first relating to the Labour leader – Sir John disputed Mr Corbyn’s claim that his association with senior figures from Islamist groups have been in the interests of helping to achieve peace in the Middle East, and suggested that he was a “useful idiot” to Hamas.
It came amid growing talk among moderate Labour MPs of walking out over Mr Corbyn’s approach to antiSemitism, fuelled by accusations last week that he had declared that British Zionists have “no sense of English irony”. My Corbyn insisted that he was referring to specific pro-Israel activists, and would be more careful in future about his use of the word “Zionist”.
Yesterday it was reported that Mike Gapes had told colleagues: “I am not prepared to support the racist antiSemite. Period. It’s over for me”. Yesterday John Mann, another senior Labour MP, said: “The Labour Party will cease to exist unless MPs and unions act to sort this racism out.” Sir John’s review of the Muslim Brotherhood was commissioned by David Cameron amid allegations about the network’s association with extremism and terrorism, and concluded that membership “should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism”.
A published summary of his report cited links between the Brotherhood and several organisations with which Mr Corbyn has separately been linked, including Interpal, the Palestinian aid charity, and the Cordoba Foundation, “a think tank which is associated with the Brotherhood (though claiming to be neither affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood nor a lobby organisation for it).” Mr Corbyn has attended multiple events put on by both organisations.
Citing Mr Corbyn’s “close association with senior figures from Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizbollah”, Sir John states: “Perhaps Corbyn might start by explaining how exactly his meetings with these groups, his clear sympathies with at least some of their aims and activities, and his public support for them has helped promote the peace he claims to want – though has failed so far to achieve.”
Last week it emerged that Mr Corbyn had claimed in 2010 to have had a “long meeting” with Khaled Mashal, the Hamas leader, in Gaza. He once publicly referred to representatives of Hamas and Hizbollah as “friends”.
Mr Corbyn said on Friday: “I am now more careful with how I might use the term ‘Zionist’ because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by anti-Semites as code for Jews.”
A Labour spokesman said: “Jeremy has a long record of campaigning for peace, democracy and helping to end conflict through dialogue and negotiation, while John Jenkins has argued against Saudi Arabia introducing democratic elections.”