Thousands sign petition seeking Corbyn’s ouster over Labour anti-Semitism
Campaign Against Antisemitism group is latest to demand British opposition leader’s resignation, after revelation he accused ‘Zionists’ in 2013 of failing to grasp ‘English irony’
A petition by a British anti-Semitism advocacy group calling for the resignation of UK Labour Party chief Jeremy Corbyn garnered over 5,000 signatures in a day.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism, founded in 2014, insisted “Jeremy Corbyn must go.” It urged Labour’s lawmakers to act, noting that “only 52 Labour MPs [are needed] to propose a challenger, or Labour MPs could propose a vote of no confidence, or set up their own political party. We call on the Parliamentary Labour Party to take action.”
The petition was posted to the change.org website on Saturday, the same day a Labour Party anti-Semitism campaign group filed a complaint against Corbyn over a 2013 speech in which he said that “Zionists” in Britain do not know history or understand English culture.
The CAA petition railed against “events from Jeremy Corbyn’s disturbing past” that “have trickled into the light.”
Back when “he could speak his mind without fear of scrutiny, [Corbyn] blamed Islamist terrorist attacks on Israel; defended an appalling antisemitic mural; honored a sheikh banned from the UK for saying that Jews drink non-Jews’ blood; said that a Hamas terrorist whose life’s work was the murder of Jews was his ‘brother’; held a repulsive event on Holocaust Memorial Day in which Jews were accused of being the successors to the Nazis; tried to have the word ‘Holocaust’ removed from the title of Holocaust Memorial Day; laid a wreath at a memorial for the Black September terrorists behind the Munich Massacre; and now we have heard that he made euphemistic comments to suggest that Jews are somehow un-British and foreign to the ways of our country,” it accused.
The petition garnered 5,581 signatures in its first 20 hours online.
It charged that Corbyn “over many years…sought to defend, honor, assist and promote antisemites and the context is that his actions have been consistent with those of an ideological antisemite. We had hoped that the Labour Party might at some point rise to the defense of British Jews by removing Jeremy Corbyn or by demanding his resignation, but the institutions of the once proudly anti-racist Labour Party are now corrupted and will not act.”
Earlier Saturday, Labour’s internal anti-Semitism advocacy group, Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said it lodged a formal complaint with the party against Corbyn for “anti-Semitism and for bringing the party into disrepute,” according to the Observer.
Calling for Corbyn’s immediate suspension, a spokesperson for the Labour group told the paper the Labour leader “must be subjected to the same scrutiny and procedures as any other member.”
“It is time for the Labour party to show it is serious about tackling anti-Semitism by immediately suspending Mr. Corbyn and launching a full and independent investigation into his conduct,” Euan Philipps said.
The complaint came a day after The Times of London published an editorial calling Corbyn “straightforwardly antisemitic,” before concluding that his comments should “render him ineligible for membership, let alone leadership, of a democratic party and for public office.”
Corbyn — who was already under fire over his handling of anti-Semitism within the party and several recently surfaced anti-Israel remarks he made — faced fresh criticism last week after the Daily Mail published a video of a 2013 speech in which he asserted that “Zionists” were unable to grasp “English irony,” despite often having lived in Britain for years.
Corbyn told attendees of a Hamas-endorsed conference in London that “Zionists… clearly have two problems. One is they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either. They needed two lessons, which we could perhaps help them with.”
The conference featured several controversial speakers, including one who advocated boycotting Holocaust Memorial Day and another who blamed Israel for the 9/11 terror attacks in New York.
Corbyn’s 2013 speech was met with backlash from a number of Labour MPs and Jewish figures, with the editor of the Jewish Chronicle saying “it’s almost impossible to read this as anything other than a reference to Jews.”
But Corbyn defended his remarks, insisting that his mention of “Zionists” was not a euphemism for the Jewish people.
Jeremy Corbyn stands in front of a Hamas flag at an anti-Israel rally and makes the outrageous claim of an Israeli genocide against Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/psXab3AWAi
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) August 23, 2018
In a statement quoted by The Guardian on Friday, Corbyn said he had become “more careful with how I might use the term ‘Zionist’ because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by anti-Semites as code for Jews.”
The incident is the latest of a string of revelations detailing Corbyn’s antipathy for the Jewish state, and highlights the widening gap between the British left and the country’s Jewish community.
Claims of anti-Jewish prejudice within Labour have grown since Corbyn, a longtime critic of Israel, was elected leader in 2015. UK Jewish groups have accused him of failing to expel party members who openly express anti-Semitic views.
The dispute recently boiled over after the party last month proposed adopting a definition of anti-Semitism that differed from the one approved by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a move that was met with anger from Jewish groups and the country’s chief rabbi.
In recent months, photos and videos and photos have emerged of Corbyn and other Labour officials making anti-Semitic and virulent anti-Israel comments.
Last week, Israel Advocacy Movement tweeted footage of Corbyn accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians during a 2014 rally, as a Hamas flag waved behind him. Corbyn infamously called the terror group “friends” prior to his election as Labour leader two years ago, a statement he has since walked back.
One of the photos published recently showed Corbyn hosting a panel featuring a senior Hamas officials in 2012, including members convicted of murdering Israelis in terror attacks.
Earlier in August, the Daily Mail published photos of Corbyn in 2014 laying a wreath at the grave of the Palestinian terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Corbyn initially claimed he attended the ceremony at the Cemetery of the Martyrs of Palestine, in Tunisia to commemorate the 47 Palestinians killed during an Israeli bombing raid there in 1985. But images recovered from a Palestinian Embassy archive by the paper showed Corbyn holding a wreath in front of a plaque dedicated to members of Black September.
“A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who were at the conference to those that were killed in Paris in 1992,” Corbyn later admitted, adding that he while he was present at the ceremony, he did not “think I was actually involved in it.”
Last week, Times of Israel editor David Horovitz detailed Corbyn’s years of activism on behalf of a Labour movement that sought to “eradicate Zionism” and replace Israel with a secular Palestinian state, and branded Corbyn “an anti-Semite and a racist.” Horovitz wrote that Labour, if it wants to root out anti-Semitism, must expel Corbyn.
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