The Archbishop of Canterbury has backed an electoral intervention by Britain’s chief rabbi by saying the country should be alert to the profound unease felt by many Jews at the prospect of a left-wing Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn.
Justin Welby tweeted Tuesday after Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis wrote in the Times of London that Britain’s Labour Party and its leader have been deeply tarnished by anti-Semitism, as Breitbart London reported.
Welby said political parties must make it “an absolute priority” to avoid any actions that increase the perception of fear. He said Mirvis’s statement “ought to alert us to the deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews.”
That the Chief Rabbi should be compelled to make such an unprecedented statement at this time ought to alert us to the deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews: pic.twitter.com/DNxr0Qxht5
— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) November 26, 2019
It is without precedent for the chief rabbi to express his thoughts on party politics during an election campaign. He stopped short of advising voters to shun Labour but made his point about the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn gaining Number 10.
“The way in which the (Labour) leadership has dealt with anti-Jewish racism is incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud,” he wrote.
“It is not my place to tell any person how they should vote. … I simply pose the question: What will the result of this election say about the moral compass of our country?”
The Labour Party in general has been engulfed in claims of institutionalized anti-Semitism since Corbyn became leader.
At a personal level, he has also been slammed after pictures emerged confirming he attended a 2014 wreath-laying ceremony for Palestinian terrorists.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly admonished Corbyn when the images became public last year:
The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone – left, right and everything in between
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) August 13, 2018
Netanyahu’s rare public criticism of a foreign politician came after the Daily Mail newspaper published photos of Corbyn holding a wreath to honor the instigators of the Munich atrocity.
He had previously denied being part of the service.
As Breitbart Jerusalem reported, Corbyn stirred condemnation and disbelief from members of his own party when the graveside trip was first revealed in May, 2017.
The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Marie van der Zyl, said Corbyn should apologise for being at the ceremony in Tunisia.
“After days of being evasive, Jeremy Corbyn has now admitted attending a memorial event for the terrorist murders of unarmed athletes. How can you say he is not involved?” she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
“In 1972, these are unarmed people who were attending the Olympics, they were savagely mutilated and murdered. There is no reason Jeremy Corbyn should not apologise to the widows and to the victims for this terrible massacre.”
Also last year Corbyn’s camp defended comments he made during a speech at a rally outside Israel’s London embassy in 2010 in which he compared Israel’s blockade of the Gaza strip to the Nazi sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad during World War II.
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