Third union in call to Corbyn
THE leader of a third major trade union has called on Labour to adopt in full the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism.
The call from the general secretary of shopworkers’ union Usdaw, Paddy Lillis, comes after similar interventions by Unison and the GMB and intensifies pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to rethink Labour’s anti-Semitism code of conduct.
Mr Corbyn was also facing fresh questions about a 2014 visit to a Palestinian cemetery in Tunisia, after claims that photographs showed him holding a wreath near the graves of those responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The visit hit the headlines during last year’s general election campaign, when Labour said Mr Corbyn had been paying his respects at a memorial to those killed by an Israeli air strike on Palestine Liberation Organisation offices in Tunis in 1985.
But the Daily Mail said that its own visit to the Martyrs Cemetery had shown the memorial was 15 yards away from the spot where Mr Corbyn was pictured in photographs held in the Palestinian Embassy website archive.
The newspaper said the pictures were taken in front of a plaque honouring three men, including the founder of the Black September organisation which carried out the Munich atrocity and yards from the grave of PLO intelligence chief Atef Bseiso.
The director of Labour Friends of Israel, Jennifer Gerber, told the Mail: “It beggars belief that anyone would wish to honour the terrorists behind the brutal massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at Munich.
“However, it is sadly utterly unsurprising that Jeremy Corbyn appears to have done so.”
But Labour sources insisted Mr Corbyn had already provided a full answer about his presence in the cemetery, when he said last year: “I was in Tunisia at a Palestinian conference and I spoke at that Palestinian conference and I laid a wreath to all those that had died in the air attack that took place on Tunis, on the headquarters of the Palestinian organisations there.”
The pictures emerged amid continuing controversy over Labour’s refusal to adopt the IHRA text in full, including its list of examples of anti-Semitic behaviour.