LONDON—Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn is an “antisemite” whose remarks about British Zionists were “the most offensive statement made by a senior British politician” since Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, said former U.K. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.
He was referring to comments made in 2013 by Corbyn to a conference of the Palestinian Return Centr in London in which he said that “Zionists … clearly have two problems. One is they don’t want to study history and, secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either.”
Footage of the speech resurfaced last week amid a growing standoff between Labour and the Jewish community. Sacks’s statement come as a video from 2013 surfaced of Corbyn giving a speech at the Palestinian Return Centre in London, where he said that “Zionists … clearly have two problems. One is they don’t want to study history and, secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either.”
‘’This speech was divisive, hateful and like Powell’s speech it undermines the existence of an entire group of British citizens by depicting them as essentially alien,’’ said Rabbi Sacks.”
He said : ‘’Now, within living memory of the Holocaust, and while Jews are being murdered elsewhere in Europe for being Jews, we have an antisemite as the leader of the Labour Party and Her Majesty’s Opposition. That is why Jews feel so threatened by Mr Corbyn and those who support him.”
In his remarks, made in an interview with The New Statesman, Sacks called Corbyn “dishonest and dangerous”, adding: “He has legitimised the public expression of hate, and where he leads, others will follow.”
In 1968, Conservative MP Enoch Powell argued immigration to the UK would mean “the black man will have the whip hand over the white man”.
A petition, initiated by The Campaign Against Antisemitism, calling for the resignation of Jeremy Corbyn, has so far garnered 25,000 signatures.