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Home Secretary says Corbyn should resign after laying wreath for Munich terrorists
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said Jeremy Corbyn should resign as Labour leader after pictures emerged of him visiting the graves of terrorists responsible for the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The Home Secretary said that the leader of any other mainstream political party would have to go if they had paid tribute to terrorists in this way. The Labour Party said that Corbyn was paying his respects to victims of a 1985 Israeli airstrike on Palestinian Liberation Organisation offices in Tunis. His own account in 2014 claimed that wreaths had been laid not only at the memorial, but also “on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991”. The Mail on Sunday, who published the pictures, sent a reporter to the cemetery to prove that in the original photos Corbyn is not standing with the wreath at the memorial, but is paying his respects at the graves of the men who organised the Munich attack.
Israel’s Labour Party Secretary General MK Hilik Bar said: “The [Israeli] Labour Party has made it clear that until it sees Labour take real action to fight antisemitism and an absolute retraction by Mr. Corbyn of all the severe statements he has made thus far, proper relations will not be restored and the Labour Party will continue to fight against Mr. Corbyn’s beliefs and the antisemitism that has spread in his party without an adequate response.”
Israeli Labour MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin said that she will decide soon whether or not to attend the Labour Party conference in Liverpool in September. “I’m shocked by the reports about Corbyn. That said, we need to bear in mind that the Labour Party has a large group of friends of Israel and that now is the time to strengthen them.”
Labour Party Chairman Avi Gabbay sent a letter to Corbyn in April cutting links with the Labour leader’s office. He said it was his responsibility “to acknowledge the hostility that you [Corbyn] have shown to the Jewish community and the antisemitic statements and actions you have allowed as Leader of the UK Labour Party. We cannot retain relations with you while you fail to adequately address the antisemitism within the UK Labour Party.”