The Gaza dinner that didn’t go down well
BOASTS OF a “takeaway dinner” with the head of Hamas have put Jeremy Corbyn under fresh pressure over his links to Palestinian extremists.
The Labour leader’s meeting with Khaled Mashal became the subject of an article he wrote for the communist Morning Star newspaper in 2010.
“We were fed a takeaway dinner on tables in the wrecked debating chamber during our long meeting with Hamas Prime Minister Khaled Mashal,” Mr Corbyn said.
Mr Mashal, who has been leader of the Islamic terror group since the assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in 2004, featured on a terrorism financing restrictions list issued by the UK government in February.
In a speech in 2012, Mr Mashal, who stepped down as Hamas’ politburo chief at the end of his term in 2017, said: “Palestine, from the river to the sea, from the north to the south, is our land and we will never give up one inch or any part of it.”
In 2015 he praised Palestinian knife attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem, glorifying their martyrdom and saying: “By God, they are the most exalted and the noblest of people.”
He added: “After the knives used by the people of the West Bank and Jerusalem - can anyone possibly have an excuse to abandon the path of Jihad?”
A Labour spokesperson confirmed that the dinner had taken place but was unable to explain how Mr Corbyn had met Mr Mashal at a time when he was still in exile from Gaza. He did not return until 2012.
It has also emerged that Mr Corbyn attended a 2012 Doha conference with a convicted Hamas military leader jailed for his role in terrorist attacks that killed more than 100. He hosted a panel discussion at the event attended by senior Hamas officials, including Mr Mashal and Husam Badran, who was given a 17-year sentence for terrorist atrocities committed during the Second Intifada between 2001 and 2002.
Footage uncovered by the Daily Telegraph revealed that all three men spoke at the two-day conference in Doha, entitled the “Seminar on Palestinian Khaled Mashal Refugees in the Arab World”.
Mr Badran can be heard telling the conference: “The nakba [day of catastrophe] which made us refugees took place via force and the return will be only viable through military and armed resistance and nothing else.”
According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was a leader of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank and responsible for executing attacks, raising and receiving funds for explosive devices, and for sending suicide bombers to Israeli targets.
The Ministry claims that he was responsible for the bombings of the Dolphinarium discotheque, two restaurants in Jerusalem and Haifa, a train station, two buses and the Park Hotel in Netanya.
Three days after the conference, Mr Corbyn acknowledged in the Morning Star that he had listened to speeches given by men who had been released “in return for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit”, adding that “their contribution was fascinating and electrifying”.
He also confirmed in an interview with the Iranian news channel, Press TV, that he had met Umar at the conference, adding: “I met many of the brothers, including the brother who’s been speaking here . . . when I was in Doha earlier this year.”
Meanwhile Mr Corbyn was accused of being an “antisemite” who appeared to “admire” terrorists by Prof Shaul Ladany, a Holocaust survivor and former Israeli athlete who also escaped the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.
He was joined in condemning the Labour leader by six members of the British Olympic team in Munich, who said they had been appalled by his decision to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at a cemetery where men connected to the massacre are buried.
Six members of Britain’s 1972 Olympics team, some of whom witnessed the attack, also described Mr Corbyn as “despicable” and “not fit to lead”.
Commenting on the Doha Conference, LFI director Jennifer Gerber, said: “Jeremy Corbyn was not on a peace mission, he was attending a conference which gave a platform to individuals who have the blood of hundreds of Israelis on their hands.”