UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn released a video on Thursday in which he claimed he was “utterly determined to root out anti-Semitism from our party and our society.”
The veteran left-winger went on: “I say again to the Jewish people, both in our party and across the country, we are your allies in the fight against anti-Semitism.
“Labour is the only party with a deep-rooted history of combating racism.”
Mr. Corbyn was forced to act after MPs who left the Labour Party this week over anti-Semitic attacks revealed they have faced increased online abuse from left-wing activists and Jeremy Corbyn’s own supporters since quitting.
Mr. Corbyn hit back with the following:
We will deliver the change the people of this country need and deserve. pic.twitter.com/17NRn222s4
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) February 20, 2019
However earlier in the House of Commons, former Labour MP Luciana Berger – who is heavily pregnant – spoke of a rise in “insidious antisemitic conspiracy theories” against her, which included:
Being an agent of Mossad
Being “a traitor to my country”
Being paid directly by Benjamin Netanyahu “based purely on my Jewish background”
She added: “And just yesterday an individual who says they are a member of the Labour party and with the hashtag #JCforPM in their bio… said: ‘Shame on Luciana Berger, A Zionist Bitch, I hate her, I hate her baby, her Israel’.”
Berger also said the eight Labour defectors who now sit as crossbench Independents had been called “the Israel stooges party” and “the Israeli apartheid democratic front”.
She told MPs: “This is a shameful record, let alone from a leadership and a political party that seek the highest office in our land.
“That is why I have arrived at the sickening conclusion that the Labour party is institutionally antisemitic in its processes, its attitudes and its behaviour.” But she pledged: “I will certainly not be intimidated, bullied or silenced.”
The UK Labour Party has long fought off claims it houses virulent anti-Jewish members. Mr. Corbyn himself has also been directly accused of doing nothing to stem that tide.
Last December the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organisation that researches the Holocaust and contemporary anti-Semitism, named Mr. Corbyn’s handling of anti-Semitism allegations in the party in their annual list of top-ten worst incidents.
Repeating comments by British Jews that the potential for a Jeremy Corbyn led left-wing government in the United Kingdom is an “existential threat to Jews”, the Simon Wiesenthal Center puts Corbyn’s handling of the massive controversy over anti-Jewish sentiment in his party in fourth place in the list of the ten worst anti-Semitic incidents worldwide in 2018.
Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: Follow @SunSimonKent or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com
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