Jeremy Corbyn has been drawn into a fresh anti-Semitism row after footage emerged of the Labour leader accusing British “Zionists” of having “no sense of English irony” despite having lived in the UK “all their lives”.
Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger, attacked Corbyn over the clip, filmed at a conference in London in 2013 and unearthed by the Daily Mail, describing the Labour leader’s comments in the speech as “inexcusable”.
In a tweet Berger said the remarks made her feel “unwelcome in my own party”, but Labour has insisted Corbyn had been quoted out of context and that he had been referring to Jewish and non-Jewish activists.
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The footage comes from a speech to a meeting convened by the Palestinian Return Centre in 2013. During the meeting Corbyn “spoke about the importance of history, and of how necessary it was for people to understand the origins of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians”, reports The Guardian.
He then praised a speech he had recently heard by the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, at a meeting in parliament in which he gave an “incredibly powerful” account of the history of Palestine.
Corbyn went on: “This was dutifully recorded by the, thankfully silent, Zionists who were in the audience on that occasion, and then came up and berated him afterwards for what he had said.
“They clearly have two problems. One is that they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, don’t understand English irony either.
“Manuel does understand English irony, and uses it very effectively. So I think they needed two lessons, which we can perhaps help them with.”
Labour MPs Catherine McKinnell and Phil Wilson tweeted their support of Berger, while prominent Corbyn critic and Labour MP Mike Gapes said he was in “total solidarity” with Berger and that he was “sickened by the racism and anti-Semitism at the top of our party”.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about the row, Corbyn’s close ally John McDonnell, said the words had been taken out of context. “In certain contexts certain phrases are appropriate. To take them out of context is unacceptable and I think is not helping the issue, it’s exacerbating the issue,” he added.
A Labour source told The Guardian that when Corbyn “was referring to particular Zionists at the meeting in 2013, he was referring to a group that included Jews and non-Jews”.
But writing in The Jewish Chronicle, Daniel Sugarman says “it's clear that to [Corbyn], to be ‘Zionist’ in this country means to be foreign, out of place here”.
“To say, about a group of people who ‘have probably lived here all their lives’ that ‘they don't understand English irony’, is to define them as foreigners. Not just foreigners, but Bad Foreigners. They don't fit in here. They don't belong”, he writes.
A spokesperson for the Labour leader said: “Jeremy is totally opposed to all forms of anti-Semitism and is determined to drive it out from society.”
