Have Hamas declared their support for Jeremy Corbyn?

It’s less than 48 hours until the polls open for the local elections and following last week’s anti-Semitism media-storm, Corbyn needs all the friends he can get if he hopes to keep voters onside. Alas, some friends are more helpful than others.

As Labour try and show that they do not condone anti-Semitism, Corbyn has reportedly received a declaration of support from… Hamas. Yes, following Corbyn’s decision to reject calls to denounce the Islamist group — whose armed wing is banned as a terrorist organisation in the UK — Breitbart Jerusalem report that Taher A-Nunu, a senior Hamas official, has said that Corbyn’s willingness to engage with the Gaza-based group as a ‘painful hit that the Zionist enemy received’. Here is the statement in full:

‘We welcome the declaration of the Labour Chairman and see his engagement as a very important statement that is also a painful hit that the Zionist enemy received. It comes as part of the international boycott campaign that the enemy (Israel) is suffering from. This campaign is succeeding on both the economic and political levels and it comes at a moment that the enemy is facing difficulties in justifying its crimes against the Palestinian people.

We consider the statements of the Labour leader to be an important message to people in Western countries that Hamas is not and will not be considered a terrorist group and our struggle is reduced to the borders of occupied Palestine.’

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If it is the case that Hamas take Corbyn’s statements to be ‘an important message to people in Western countries that Hamas is not and will not be considered a terrorist group’, for many this will just serve as an ‘important message’ that the Labour leader’s current anti-Semitism party woes are not going away anytime soon.

Update: The plot thickens. Nunu denies making this statement. Speaking to Middle East Eye, he says that he did not speak to Breitbart Jerusalem on this topic: