U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has sparked new anger with the publication of a video showing him saying British Zionists "don't understand English irony," at a conference hosted by the Palestinian Return Centre in London in 2013.
The Daily Mail published the video on Thursday. It shows Corbyn at the conference, which had been promoted online by the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, the terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, where he was discussing a speech given by Palestinian Authority Ambassador to the U.K. Manuel Hassassian.
Corbyn said Hassassian had made a "powerful, passionate, effective speech" in Parliament about "this history of Palestine [and] the rights of the Palestinian people." He said the "thankfully silent Zionists" in the audience had "dutifully recorded" Hassassian's speech, and had confronted him once it was over.
"They [Zionists] clearly have two problems. One is that they don't want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country [the U.K.] for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don't understand English irony either," Corbyn said.
"I think they need two lessons, which we can perhaps help them with."
Corbyn shared a stage at the conference with Alan Hart, known for his conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, who in his own speech described Zionism as "a cancer at the heart of international affairs," and former deputy head of the Muslim Council of Britain Daud Abdullah, who put his name to a letter saying the British Royal Navy should be attacked if it tried to keep weapons from being smuggled into the Gaza Strip.
Another speaker was Rev. Stephen Sizer, who in 2015 was banned from social media outlets for blaming Israel for the 9/11 attacks and was even banned by the Church of England authorities for his "anti-Semitic ideas."
Corbyn wrote a letter defending Sizer, saying Sizer had been victimized for daring to "speak out against Zionism" and was "under attack by certain individuals intent on discrediting the excellent work that Stephen does in highlighting the injustices of the Palestinian Israeli situation."
Editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper Stephen Pollard said that the footage of Corbyn's speech in the Daily Mail "shows the reality of what [he] thinks of Jews, as somehow a breed apart."
Pollard said Corbyn uses the term "Zionists" as code for "Jews."
Corbyn consistently denies allegations that he is anti-Semitic but has been the subject of much controversy in recent weeks amid a focus on the Labour Party's failure to address rising anti-Semitism among its members. Recent reports have shown him laying a wreath at a memorial to the Black September terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and attending the wedding of a known Holocaust denier.
In late July, three Jewish newspapers in the U.K. ran a joint editorial calling Corbyn "an existential threat to Jewish life in this country." The editorial, which ran in the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish News, and Jewish Telegraph, said that since Corbyn's election as Labour leader in 2015, the party had grown increasingly tolerant of anti-Semitism.
"The party that was, until recently, the natural home for our community has seen its values and integrity eroded by Corbynite contempt for Jews and Israel," the editorial said.
