British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been accused by a party branch of personally engaging in antisemitic acts on nine occasions.
The accusation was featured in a damning 53-page report filed by the Labour Jewish Movement, one of the oldest societies affiliated with the party, to the body tasked with probing antisemitism within the UK’s main opposition party and its failure to adequately deal with complaints about the matter.
Jewish groups have accused Corbyn, of allowing a massive rise in antisemitism within the ranks of the party that was once considered the natural home of British Jewry. Thousands of cases of alleged hate speech against Jews have been recorded within Labour since 2015, when Corbyn was elected to lead it. The party is currently being formally investigated by the UK’s anti-racism watchdog.
British media reported the filing of the document a week before general elections in which Corbyn is running against Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party.
The Jewish Labour Movement report said the party harboured “endemic, institutional antisemitism” and that there is “overwhelming evidence that antisemitic conduct is pervasive at all levels of the party,” detailing countless such cases.
Corbyn himself “has repeatedly associated with, sympathised with and engaged in antisemitism,” the report said in an 11-clause section that listed nine such cases.
They included writing the foreword for a book that claims Jews control banks and the press, expressing support for a self-described Holocaust denier and others accused of antisemitism, and laying a wreath at the graves of Palestinian terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972.
The extensive report was based on the testimonies of 70 current and former Labour staffers.
One of them listed 22 occasions of antisemitic abuse during party meetings, where he was called a “child killer,” “Tory Jew” and “Zio scum” and was told he’s “good with money” and that “Hitler was right.”
A Labour spokesperson responded to British media, saying: “This document includes baseless assumptions about current staff’s workload and the untrue allegations about outstanding cases. The Labour Party is not institutionally antisemitic and complaints relate to a small minority of our members. We have significantly reformed our procedures over the past year.”
