Amid what seems like a continual stream of disturbing developments surrounding Jeremy Corbyn this month, a prominent anti-Semitism watchdog group is calling on the U.K. Labour leader to step down.
“Throughout the last three years and these past few weeks, Jeremy Corbyn has lied, distracted, tried to twist the definition of anti-Semitism to exclude his past conduct and issued false apologies when pressure mounted,” Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said on Aug. 25.
“We had hoped that the Labour Party might at some point rise to the defence 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,” the group added. “Instead, they merely persecute those members who stand up to anti-Semitism.”
British Jewry panned Corbyn and his party for only adopting part of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism. British Jews also blasted Corbyn for insincerely apologizing to them for his anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.
Earlier this month, photos surfaced of Corbyn laying a wreath near the grave of one of the members of the Black September terrorist group responsible for the murders of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.
Moreover, Corbyn, who has called those in the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah “friends,” attended the wedding of senior Palestinian diplomat Husam Zomlot, who has been accused of Holocaust denial, in 2010.
Finally, a video surfaced last week of Corbyn at a conference promoted by Hamas in 2013, accusing Zionists residing in the United Kingdom of having no understanding of British culture.
“Zionists … clearly have two problems,” said Corbyn. “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.”