(JTA) – A newspaper published photos of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn holding a wreath in a Tunisian cemetery, saying it was near the graves of Black September terrorists who in 1972 killed 11 Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics.
The pictures published in the Daily Mail on Friday, Aug. 10, were reported to be taken in 2014. Corbyn, a far-left politician, was elected in 2015 to lead Britain’s Labour party amid allegations that he is encouraging antisemitism in its ranks.
In May, Corbyn denied allegation that he had attended a commemoration for Black September terrorists in Tunisia, insisting he was at the cemetery where some of them are buried for a commemoration for 47 people who died in an Israeli air strike on a Tunisian PLO base in 1985. However, Daily Mail reporters who visited the cemetery found the plaque for the 47 bombing casualties was situated approximately 15 yards away from where Corbyn was photographed holding the wreath. “Instead he was in front of a plaque that lies beside the graves of Black September members,” the report said. The plaque near where Corbyn was photographed honors three dead men: Salah Khalaf, who founded Black September; his key aide, Fakhri al-Omari; and Hayel Abdel-Hamid, PLO chief of security. Adjacent to their graves is that of Bseiso. All are widely believed to have been assassinated either by Israel’s Mossad or rival Palestinian factions.
Separately, the Daily Mail also published on Saturday pictures of Corbyn delivering a speech at the 2010 wedding of Husam Zomlot, a British citizen and prominent pro-Palestinian activist who told the BBC in 2014 that Israel is “fabricating all these stories about beheading journalists in Iraq… as if they are fabricating also the story of the Holocaust, that it happened in Europe.” Another old clip that surfaced last week shows Corbyn saying during an interview for the Iranian Press TV station in 2011 that the BBC has “a bias towards saying that Israel is a democracy in the Middle East, Israel has a right to exist, Israel has its security concerns.” Also, in 2013, he defended on Facebook an antisemitic mural in London, it was revealed earlier this year.
Corbyn’s critics say he has an anti-Israel attitude that facilitates growing expressions of anti-Semitism. Last week, Corbyn for the first time acknowledged that Labour has an anti-Semitism problem and promised to address it but leaders of British Jews said they do not believe him.