Former far-left U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his newly formed political party, “Your Party,” is committed to an “absolute opposition to Zionism” in remarks first reported by the U.K.’s Jewish News.
Corbyn made the comments at a meeting in the south-west London borough of Wandsworth on Sunday, invoking the “Greater Israel” trope used historically by anti-Israel conspiracists and antisemites that the Jewish state has secret plans to significantly expand its borders to those of the Hebrew Bible.
“The whole Zionist project was about expanding Israel forevermore, which is exactly what [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is doing with the Greater Israel project. So, yes—absolute opposition to Zionism, and absolute solidarity with the people of Palestine,” Corbyn said.
“Zionism was a creation. I was reading about the imperial history of Zionism—actually, it first reared its head in the late 19th century, with U.S. Zionism in 1840, influenced by British policy in the Middle East,” he stated, framing the Zionist movement as a tool of Western imperial powers rather than a legitimate movement for Jewish national self-determination in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland.
The 76-year-old MP for Islington North also said he was writing “a very long article at the moment on things to do with Palestine that I’ve been involved with over the past 40 years,” claiming that the situation has become more “horrific.”
He also put forward the heavily disputed claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a charge that Jerusalem adamantly rejects, calling it a projection and a modern-day antisemitic blood libel.
“And now we have the genocide, and it is a genocide in Gaza. We in Your Party are absolutely in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and will be guided by them on the policies we develop and the direction we take going forward.”
Corbyn co-founded Your Party with left-wing anti-Israel activist Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South.
