Dethroned British Labour leader hosts radical anti-Semite who says George Floyd death is Israel’s fault, then Corbyn says glibly: ‘anti-Semitism is wrong’
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel
Jeremy Corbyn, the anti-Israel former leader of Britain’s Labour Party, is at it again.
Corbyn has time on his hands after being crushed in the British elections last year, in part because voters rejected the systemic anti-Semitism he brought to Labour.
He recently appeared in a video conference hosted by the Stop the War Coalition, an organization whose members often appear to advocate for war against Israel and whose protest marches have featured anti-Semitic tropes, the UK watchdog organization Campaign Against Antisemitism reported.
Corbyn appeared with veteran left-wing activist Tariq Ali, listening quietly as Ali linked Israel to the killing of George Floyd last month in Minnesota.
“I would now like to come to another part of the world which ironically links the knee on the neck to George Floyd to this region because a lot of the American police forces have been trained in Israel,” Ali said. “And the method in dealing with protests or ordinary citizens is virtually the same. You can find lots of photos of Israelis when these people are brave enough to take photographs with their knees on the neck of Palestinians.”
Ali said there was a “campaign which alleges everyone is anti-Semitic except those who support Israel. That’s basically the campaign that was waged by Israeli embassies everywhere of which one of the central targets was Jeremy Corbyn.”
Corbyn, who built his reputation by calling Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists “my friends,” did not refute or question Ali’s claims. Instead he said: “Let’s get it clear, anti-Semitism is wrong, it’s evil and it should never be condoned in any circumstances.”
Hollow words coming from a former political leader who was so anti-Semitic that in February 2019 eight members of Parliament – Jews and non-Jews – quit his party at once.
In its report on anti-Semitism in British political parties, Campaign Against Antisemitism found that members of Corbyn’s Labour Party in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of anti-Semitic discourse by parliamentary candidates, with left-wing anti-Semitism in Britain surpassing that of the far-right, usually dominated by neo-Nazis.