BRUSSELS —A senior Israeli cabinet minister accused the leadership of the British Labour party of being anti-Semitic.
During a briefing for journalists in Brussels, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Minister of Public Security and Strategic Affairs, told Daniel Boffey, correspondent of daily The Guardian that his government had become concerned by the views expressed by figures in the highest echelons of the Labour party.
“We recognise and we see that there are anti-Semitic views in many of the leadership of the current Labour party,” he said. “We hope it will be changed. The views.”
“That they will come to the right decisions about people in their party who don’t understand that Hamas is a recognized terror organisation, that you cannot have a regular relationship with a terror organisation.”
Asked specifically whether he was suggesting Corbyn himself was an antisemite, the Israeli minister paused, before adding: “I didn’t say it. I said there are views that are very close to antisemitism in the leadership of the Labour party today in the UK.”
This summer Corbyn told MPs investigating accusations of antisemitism in the Labour party that he regretted once calling members of Hamas and Hezbollah “friends”.
After a speaker at a fringe meeting at the Labour conference claimed free speech should include the right to question the Holocaust, Corbyn undertook a series of interviews to insist that antisemitism was “completely at odds with the beliefs of this party”.
The minister, who is the second most senior in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said that a review last year of ant-Semitism carried out by Shami Chakrabarti, the former director of the civil rights group Liberty, who was later given a peerage at the suggestion of the Labour leader, had been “empty”.
The inquiry, which followed the suspension of the Member of the Parliament Naz Shah and the former London mayor Ken Livingstone amid anti-Semitism claims, had found an “occasionally toxic atmosphere”.
Minister Erdan said: “We don’t think this committee was enough. We still follow and listen to their views and we are concerned that it will lead, it will bring, the UK to a very, very negative place. Still we are optimistic.”
The Israeli Minister was in Brussels for meetings at the European Parliament and the European Commission. He addressed a conference organized by the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM), in cooperation with the European Coalition for Israel (ECI), Europe Israel Public Affairs (EIPA) and the Israel Allies Foundation (IAF).
During his meetings, Erdan asked his interlocutors to take action to stop funding for boycotts of Israel.