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Labour’s pockets of anti-Semitism: the evidence

This week, Jeremy Corbyn said he was ‘sincerely sorry’ for the pain that had been caused to the Jewish community by anti-Semitism in ‘pockets’ within the Labour Party. Alas, his apology wasn’t enough to stop protesters – including some of his party colleagues – gathering in Parliament Square on Monday to voice their concerns. Nor were Corbyn’s comments enough to dissuade some of his more loyal supporters that allegations of anti-Semitism aren’t always an MSM smear designed to keep the Tories in No 10.

So that readers can make up their own mind as to the size of those ‘pockets’, below is a list which has been compiled detailing alleged incidents on the matter:

1. Corbyn came to the defence of Sheikh Raed Salah, who revived the medieval anti-Semitic ‘blood libel’ slur that Jews cook with children’s blood. Salah was arrested by British police in 2011 when he was due to speak at an event in the House of Commons – alongside Corbyn. In 2012 Corbyn called Salah ‘a very honoured citizen’.

2. Labour Students at Oxford University Labour Club mocked the Jewish victims of the Paris kosher supermarket attack, called Auschwitz a ‘cash cow’, and used the Neo-Nazi slur ‘Zio’, according to extensive testimony from Jewish students. After months of obfuscation, including an NEC decision to not publish a party report that concluded there had been ‘some incidents’ of anti-Semitic behaviour, Labour’s NEC decided not to discipline the key perpetrators.

3. A Jewish Labour MP, Ruth Smeeth, was sent a 1,000 word death threat from a Corbyn-supporter calling her a ‘yid c–t’. The threat followed Smeeth’s decision to walk out of a meeting outlining Labour’s response to anti-semitism because she was accused of working ‘hand in hand with the right-wing media to attack Jeremy’. Smeeth then received 20,000 abusive messages and has since questioned whether Labour is still ‘a safe space for British Jews’.

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