Now Corbyn turns down dinner with Israel’s PM

JEREMY Corbyn has risked a fresh row over Israel after snubbing an official dinner with the country’s premier, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Labour leader was invited to the event to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which helped pave the way for a Jewish state. But Mr Corbyn, a long-time supporter of the Palestinian cause, has reportedly turned it down and is sending his shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry instead.

Labour has been dogged by allegations of anti-Semitism within the party.

Ken Livingstone has already been suspended for saying Hitler was a supporter of Zionism, while anti-Semitic remarks were made at a fringe event at Labour’s party conference last month. Mr Corbyn sparked a similar row at the time when

he was invited to a Labour Friends of Israel reception but turned it down and sent Miss Thornberry in his place.

He claimed he had to work on his leader’s speech – but was then spotted at three other receptions on the same evening. Mr Netanyahu has been invited to London by Theresa May to mark the Balfour centenary ‘with pride’ on Thursday.

The Balfour Declaration was signed on November 2, 1917, by Arthur Balfour, Britain’s then foreign secretary. It pledged the UK’s support for a Jewish ‘national home’ in Palestine.

Israeli ambassador Mark Regev told the Sunday Times a ‘vocal minority’ of British students and academics are still intent upon the destruction of Israel, 70 years after the country came into being.

He said those who oppose the Declaration are ‘exposing themselves for the extremists they are’.

‘Exposed as extremists’