MUNICH MASSACRE WIDOWS RAGE AT CORBYN
As pressure grows on Labour leader to answer questions about tribute at terrorists’ graves...
WIDOWS of Munich victims last night condemned Jeremy Corbyn’s visit to graves of terrorists linked with the massacre.
They demanded an apology for what they described as an ‘act of maliciousness, cruelty and stupidity’.
The Labour leader also came under pressure from Jewish groups and his own MPs over his ‘despicable’ trip to Tunisia.
He has refused to answer key questions about the visit to a cemetery where members of Black September – the terror group that killed 11 Israelis at the 1972 Olympics – are buried.
The Mail’s revelations about the trip in 2014 have deepened the anti-Semitism row engulfing Mr Corbyn. Photographs in Saturday’s newspaper showed
‘A savage crime against humanity’
HOW LEADER DEFENDED HIMSELF ‘I laid a wreath to all those that had died in the air attack that took place on Tunis.’
Sky News interview, May2017..
. . . AND FACTS THAT DAMN HIM
1) Three years earlier, in the communist Morning Star, he wrote: ‘Wreaths were laid to mark the 1985 bombing of the P LO HQ and on the graves of others killed by Moss ad agents in Paris in 1991’
1) Pictures show him directly in front of plaque honouring graves of Black September members– and around 15 yards from the monument to air strike victims
1) A wreath identical to the one he is pictured with is later see non the plaque that honours terrorists linked to the Munich attacks
1) The names of the terrorists are also inscribed on the monument to victims of the air strike
him holding a wreath near the graves of those implicated in Black September and the Munich attack. Mr Corbyn was also apparently observing a prayer during a service to honour Palestinian ‘martyrs’.
Labour has insisted he was there to commemorate 47 victims of an Israeli air strike on a Palestine Liberation Organisation base in Tunisia in 1985.
But he wrote shortly after the trip that wreaths had been laid not just for the 1985 victims but ‘on the graves of others killed by Mossad’. And it emerged yesterday that the air strike memorial at the cemetery is inscribed with the names of some of the terror chiefs.
Ilana Romano, whose husband Yossef, a champion weightlifter, was castrated and shot dead by the Munich terrorists, said Mr Corbyn was ‘a danger’.
The 71-year-old from Tel Aviv added: ‘To go to the grave of a person behind the killing of 11 athletes, he should be ashamed and apologise. He’s not a person of peace. It doesn’t bother him to hurt the families. A person who goes to the grave of killers doesn’t want peace.’
Ankie Spitzer, who lost her husband Andre, a fencing coach, at Munich, said Mr Corbyn was ‘hate-filled’.
She and Mrs Romano together said: ‘We do not recall a visit of Mr Corbyn to the graves of our murdered fathers, sons and husbands. They only went to the Olympics to participate in this festival of love, peace and brotherhood; but they all returned home in coffins.
‘For Mr Corbyn to honour these terrorists, is the ultimate act of maliciousness, cruelty and stupidity.’
Home Secretary Sajid Javid suggested Mr Corbyn should quit, saying the leader of any other major party would have done so by now.
Jonathan Goldstein, chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council, said the revelations in the Mail were ‘despicable’.
He added: ‘It is reprehensible that the man who wishes to be our prime minister honoured ruthless terrorists who committed an act described by the late King Hussein of Jordan as “a savage crime against humanity”.
‘This man is not fit to be a member of parliament, let alone a national leader.
‘He has spent his entire political career cavorting with conspiracy theorists, terrorists and revolutionaries who seek to undo all the good for which our ancestors have given their lives. In so many ways, enough is enough.’
Labour MP Joan Ryan, chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, said: ‘These pictures appear to show Jeremy Corbyn standing at the grave of the founder of the terrorist group which cold-bloodedly murdered 11 Israeli athletes at Munich.
‘He must now both urgently explain why he chose to honour such a man and unreservedly apologise to the families of the innocent sportsmen who were butchered in the most horrific manner.’
Another Labour MP said: ‘Jeremy’s past is catching up with him. He’s spent the last 40 years supporting or defending all sorts of extremists and in some cases terrorists and anti-Semites.
‘It is shocking to discover that less than a year before he became Labour leader he said himself he was present when wreaths were laid at the graves of the Black September terrorists who murdered athletes at the Olympics.’
Sources close to Mr Corbyn have insisted he was at the service to commemorate only the air strike victims. But their monument is 15 yards from where Mr Corbyn is pictured – and in a different part of the cemetery complex. Instead he was in front of a plaque that lies beside the graves of Black September members. It honours Salah Khalaf, who founded Black September; his key aide Fakhri al-Omari; and also Hayel Abdel-Hamid, PLO chief of security. Adjacent to their graves is that of Atef Bseiso, a PLO intelligence chief who has been linked to the Munich atrocity. In an October 2014 article for the communist Morning Star recording his visit to the Tunisian cemetery, Mr Corbyn said wreaths were laid to mark the 1985 bombing but also ‘on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991’.
There appears to be no record of Mossad having carried out an assassination in Paris in 1991. However, Khalaf, Abdel-Hamid and al- Omari were assassinated that year. Mossad is accused of killing Bseiso in Paris in 1992.
Labour’s insistence that Mr Corbyn did not honour those involved in the Munich massacre last night is further undermined because the names of Khalaf, Abdel-Hamid and al-Omari are also inscribed on the monument to the air strike. Pictures and videos posted on the Facebook page of the Palestinian embassy in Tunisia over several years show that a wreath is routinely put on the plaque honouring Khalaf, Abdel- Hamid and al-Omari.
Yesterday when the Daily Mail posed a series of questions about the visit to the cemetery, a Labour source said: ‘We have got nothing to say beyond what we have already said.’
The Munich row comes amid controversy over Labour’s refusal to adopt in full an international definition of anti-Semitism, including a list of examples of antiSemitic behaviour.
Three senior union leaders – from the GMB, Unison and Usdaw – have added their voices to calls from deputy leader Tom Watson for the complete International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance text to be incorporated into Labour’s new code of conduct on anti-Semitism.
A Labour Party spokesman said it had agreed to re-open the development of the code, in consultation with Jewish community organisations and groups.
Writing in the Sunday Mirror, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: ‘Both Jeremy Corbyn and I have made clear that racism and anti-Semitism have no place in the Labour Party.’
IN one picture, he holds a memorial wreath. In another, his head is bowed and his hands are upturned, apparently in prayer. It is just four years ago and Jeremy Corbyn is among a group paying homage at the graves of Palestinian fanatics linked to the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and officials at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Even for a man with a long history of apologising for terror, who cosied up to the IRA and called Hamas his ‘friends’, this is a sickening new low.
The fact that Mr Corbyn attended this grim ceremony in Tunis first emerged during last year’s election campaign. But striking new images – first published by this paper on Saturday – expose what Labour denied at the time: that Mr Corbyn was at a commemoration where vile PLO terrorists were honoured. In the front row of every frame, he appears to be something of a guest of honour.
As Mr Corbyn must have known, Munich was a particularly gruesome atrocity. Eight balaclava- clad members of the Black September group stormed the apartments where the athletes and their coaches were sleeping. Two were butchered to death on the spot and the other nine were beaten then died during a failed rescue attempt.
So why was he there? Mr Corbyn’s explanation is that he was remembering the 47 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on a PLO base in Tunisia in 1985.
Yet the images clearly show that the monument to the air strike victims is some considerable distance from where he is standing beside the graves of Black September ‘martyrs’.
Not for a minute does this paper accept that he was ‘copying out of respect’ those around him as they prayed. No, the man who declined to sing the national anthem at a Battle of Britain memorial service is apparently joining in the tribute.
Most implicating of all are Mr Corbyn’s own words, in an article for the communist Morning Star newspaper at the time, in which he mentioned the air strike, but added that wreaths were also laid ‘on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991’.
There were no terrorists killed by Mossad in Paris in 1991, but that year Black September terrorists were assassinated in Tunis. Another was killed in Paris in 1992.
Isn’t it highly likely it is they to whom Mr Corbyn is referring, and he has simply made a mistake? Today Ilana Romano – whose husband Yossef, a champion weightlifter, was shot during the siege then butchered by the terrorists – rightly describes the visit as ‘disgusting’. Will Mr Corbyn now apologise, as she urges? We’re not holding our breath.
Days after the Mail confronted Mr Corbyn with the damning evidence, his response is the same hollow denial, and doesn’t address his own statement at the time. Indeed, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell even had the gall yesterday to attack the Tories for ‘intolerance’. In truth there is only one party guilty of that offence: Labour.
Far from the ‘kinder, gentler’ politics he promised, under Mr Corbyn’s leadership the party has sunk deep into a sewer of anti-Semitism, fuelled by the poisonous ideology of the hard Left. It is this very same deranged world view – in which every enemy of the West is a friend – that leads Mr Corbyn to the graves of the killers of innocent Israeli Jews.
THERE are very good reasons why official guidelines say patients with a broken hip should undergo surgery within 36 hours of diagnosis. Not only are many in unbearable pain, but waiting any longer greatly increases the risk of them dying. So how utterly shaming for the NHS that nearly 20,000 mostly elderly people are waiting longer for this essential operation.