Corbyn defended ‘wipe out Israel’ speech
JEREMY CORBYN defended Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s infamous speech calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, dismissing “sensationalist headlines” and calling it as “an opportunity…to build dialogue on the issue of Palestine,” it has been revealed.
In 2005, Mr Ahmadinejad, then the Iranian President, threatened those who supported Israel or even acknowledged its existence, saying: “Anybody who recognises Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury”.
He praised “the new wave [of attacks] in Palestine…will wipe this stigma [Israel] from the face of the Islamic world.”
As uncovered by investigative journalist Iggy Ostanin, Mr Corbyn focused on the speech in his Morning Star column a few days later, saying “all the righteous indignation never mentioned a few salient points”.
Mr Corbyn, then a backbench MP, did not condemn the language, saying Kofi Annan, then the UN Secretary General, “pointed out that what had been said was wrong and condemned it.”
He called this was the “context overlooked by the sensationalist headlines”.
Mr Corbyn also said the speech “clearly departs from the two-state solution that the Palestinian leadership has been pursuing for the past 20 years, and, in any event, would be illegal under the UN charter.”
Mr Corbyn then said the speech “also pointed out what Israel is doing to Palestine”.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning Mr Ahmadinejad’s remarks a few days later.
Labour has been contacted for comment.
THE JEWISH Labour Movement has urged a Labour MP to stop her “extremely disappointing” support for a councillor who shared neo-Nazi material and to back her suspension from the party.
JLM condemned High Peak MP Ruth George’s failure “to call out the hate shared publicly” by Rachel Abbotts, who was elected this month as a Labour councillor, or “to stand clearly in solidarity against anti-Jewish racism.”
As the JC revealed two weeks ago, Cllr Abbotts posted the material to Facebook in 2016 after her partner, Mark Abbotts, had told another person on the platform that “people seem to forget that it was the Jews who declared war on Germany”, before attempting to share a link to back up his claim.
When he could not share it, he wrote: “Hitler stated that no-one will ever ask the victors if they told the truth… and its [sic] probably isn’t available, the truth apparently rarely is, but its [sic] still true…”
Cllr Abbotts then shared a screenshot of the article her partner appeared to be referring to, an article republished on “Wintersonnenwende”, a website that tries to rehabilitate the image of Hitler and the Nazi regime.
The article put “The Holocaust” in quote marks and claimed that “Jewish leaders, in combination with powerful international Jewish financial interests” boycotted Germany “for the express purpose” of crippling the economy to bring down the Nazis.
It adds that Jewish people “effectively fired the first shot in the Second World War”, that the Nazis never planned to exterminate Jews and that “the leadership of the world Jewish community [having] formally declared war on Germany… the German authorities thus deemed Jews to be potential enemy agents.”
Ms George and the local Labour group have continued to show full support for Cllr Abbotts despite her sharing this material. Her election helped Labour take control of High Peak District Council with a majority of one.
High Peak CLP chair Fiona Sloman said the local party found “no evidence of antisemitism on Rachel’s part” after an investigation and said she was “an active and vigorous campaigner for the Labour Party locally and we were delighted when she was elected as a councillor”.
Writing to Ms George this week, JLM chair Mike Katz asked the MP — who was alerted to Cllr Abbotts’ post in February and insisted she raised it at the time with the local and national party — “how you satisfied yourself” that Labour reached “an informed judgment on the case”.
He also asked how she knew Labour’s head office — which is now “urgently” investigating the matter — had received her complaint, something it denied when contacted by the JC.
In a statement after the JC published its story, Cllr Abbotts said she was “deeply and sincerely sorry” for what she posted to Facebook, saying her partner “made some appalling arguments” and her “only involvement” in the conversation had been to post a screenshot of an article.
She said she was “in no way seeking to condone the abhorrent contents of that article — that the Jews started the war on Germany. This is an obviously wrong and clearly antisemitic claim.” She also said her partner had been writing while “in an extremely vulnerable state, having just been diagnosed with a serious health issue, he used an argument he had heard which he did not understand but, after talking through, he realised that he was wrong.”
In May 2018, two years after the exchange, Mr Abbotts wrote: “Antisemite means to be against people who speak the semitic language [sic]. Guess what, Palestinians are semites. Now obviously the Zionists have twisted this language.”
He also shared material about “the Rothschild conspiracy”. Last August, Cllr Abbotts herself shared an article headlined: “Is Israel’s hand behind the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn?” Abbotts with Corbyn