By World Israel News Staff
Jeremy Corbyn, the one time leader of the UK’s left-wing Labour Party and the head of the opposition, was barred from being reinstated as a member of parliament after a 23 – 14 internal party vote.
“Today’s…vote and Keir Starmer’s ongoing decision to bar me from sitting as a Labour MP is disappointing,” Corbyn wrote in a Twitter statement on Tuesday.
“I am grateful for and humbled by the support I’ve received, especially from my Islington North constituents. The struggle for peace, justice and sustainability goes on.”
Corbyn was suspended from the party in October 2020, on the heels of a report that found widespread antisemitism within the Labour party.
He did not accept the findings of the report and suggested it was essentially a conspiracy aimed at ousting him from power, which led to him being barred from sitting as an MP for the party.
The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) wrote that party leaders, including former London mayor Ken Livingstone and councillor Pam Bromley, used antisemitic tropes and smears freely, and that Jewish members of the party were regularly harassed and intimidated into silence.
“We found that the Labour Party’s response to anti-Semitism complaints has been inconsistent, poor and not transparent, in terms of the process used, reasons for decisions, record-keeping, delay and failures to communicate with complainants. Some complaints were unjustifiably not investigated at all,” the EHRC wrote.
Rather than take responsibility for the issue, Corbyn said that those complaining about antisemitism within the party were doing so not out of genuine concern, but to achieve strategic goals.
He downplayed the seriousness of the issue by saying that antisemitism exists everywhere in the world and that whistle-blowers were acting in bad faith.
“The scale of the problem was…dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media,” he wrote in a Facebook post at the time.
Corbyn, an outspoken pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activist, has been vocal about his criticism of Zionism, but maintains he is against all forms of racism.
In October 2019, Corbyn wrote a foreword for the reissue of an antisemitic 1902 book, Imperialism: A Study, by John Atkinson Hobson, calling it “brilliant.”
The book maintains that European finance was “controlled by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience” who “are in a unique position to control the policy of nations.”
In 2009, Corbyn referred to members of Hezbollah and Hamas as “friends.” He chaired a panel in Qatar with Hamas head Khaled Mashaal in 2012, and invited Hamas activists and supporters to a House of Commons meeting in 2015.
The late Chief Rabbi of the UK, Lord Jonathan Sacks, and former UK prime minister David Cameron, have said they believe Corbyn is antisemitic. The Simon Wiesenthal Center named him “Antisemite of the Year” for 2018.
Image: Garry Knight from London, England, CC BY 2.0 <;, via Wikimedia Commons
