Jeremy Corbyn has been called upon by Palestine’s ambassador to Britain not to “give in” on the issue of removing particular examples of anti-Semitism from the Labour party’s code of conduct.
In a statement on the issue increasingly bedevilling Corbyn’s leadership, Manuel Hassassian has written that, “as Palestinians, we urge him not to give in to the forces which would like to silence legitimate criticism of Israel’s racist policies and actions against our people and bury the crimes of Israel’s past.”
Accusations of anti-Jewish racism against senior Labour Members of Parliament (MPs) reached an apex last month when the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) decided to shun four examples of anti-Semitism from the IHRA definition that were incorporated into its new code of conduct. Examples include “claiming Israel’s existence was a racist endeavor.”
Despite inducing a barrage of public criticism, Mr Hassassian asserts that the NEC made the right call, saying that, “Labour rightly judged that this example could be used as a tool to challenge criticism of nationalist tendencies and violations of human rights in Israel and legitimate its prolonged occupation of the Palestinians rather than protecting Jews worldwide.”
"Anybody who is serious about understanding the historical context in which Israel was created will know that 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by Zionist terror militias and 500 Palestinian villages destroyed. It is difficult not to define this as a racist endeavour,” the 64-year-old ambassador added.
Invoking a well-known riposte of US President Donald Trump, Hassassian also bemoaned as “fake news” allegations that Mr Corbyn had commemorated Palestinian terrorists while visiting Tunisia in 2014. However, photographs have been released of Mr Corbyn bearing a wreath near the grave of Salah Khalaf, who stands accused by Israel of being one of the architects behind the 1972 Munich Massacre, which culminated in the murder of eleven Israeli athletes.
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Reports alleging that Corbyn has in fact, on more than one occasion, brushed shoulders with convicted terrorists continue to spill out into the public as the weeks pass. According to The Telegraph, Labour’s chief attended a conference in Doha, Qatar, in 2012 shoulder-to-shoulder with senior officials from Hamas who were responsible for the mass murder of Israelis.
Corbyn spearheaded a discussion panel at the seemingly innocuous event, dubbed ‘Seminar on Palestinian Refugees in the Arab world.’ In attendance, according to The Telegraph’s report, was Husam Badram, a former leader of Hamas’ military arm in the Occupied West Bank. Mr. Badram was allegedly the master planner behind a number of suicide bombings during the Second Palestinian Intifada uprisings, which lasted from 2000-2005. He received a 17-year sentence in an Israeli prison and had, The Telegraph claims, not even been out of prison for a year when he attended the event in Doha.
In addition to Badram, other Palestinian participants in the conference included then-Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Khaled Meshaal, along with Abdul Aziz Omar, who had spent significant time in the Israeli prison system preparing explosive belts to be used in suicide bombing operations.
