Did British Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn Honor Munich Massacre Terrorists?
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(JTA) — A newspaper published photos of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn holding a wreath in a Tunisian cemetery, saying it was near the graves of Black September terrorists who in 1972 killed 11 Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics.
The pictures published in the Daily Mail on Friday were reported to be taken in 2014. Corbyn, a far-left politician, was elected in 2015 to lead Britain’s Labour party amid allegations that he is encouraging anti-Semitism in its ranks.
In May, Corbyn denied allegation that he had attended a commemoration for Black September terrorists in Tunisia, insisting he was at the cemetery where some of them are buried for a commemoration for 47 people who died in an Israeli air strike on a Tunisian PLO base in 1985.
However, Daily Mail reporters who visited the cemetery found the plaque for the 47 bombing casualties was situated approximately 15 yards away from the where Corbyn was photographed holding the wreath.
“Instead he was in front of a plaque that lies beside the graves of Black September members,” the report said.
The plaque near where Corbyn was photographed honors three dead men: Salah Khalaf, who founded Black September; his key aide Fakhri al-Omari; and Hayel Abdel-Hamid, PLO chief of security.
Separately, the Daily Mail also published on Saturday pictures of Corbyn delivering a speech at the 2010 wedding of Husam Zomlot, a British citizen who has been accused of claiming that Israel is fabricating historical records about the Holocaust in Europe.
Another old clip that surfaced last week shows Corbyn saying during an interview for the Iranian Press TV station in 2011 that the BBC has “a bias towards saying that Israel is a democracy in the Middle East, Israel has a right to exist, Israel has its security concerns.”
Corbyn’s critics, including by the leadership of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, say he has an anti-Israel attitude that facilitates growing expressions of anti-Semitism. Last week, Corbyn for the first time acknowledged that Labour has an anti-Semitism problem and promised to address it but leaders of British Jews said they do not believe him.
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