Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has found himself in yet another anti-Semitic controversy, as a video clip from 2013 shows him stating that Zionists have “no sense of English irony.”
Corbyn was speaking at a London conference that was promoted by Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ propaganda arm, that featured “a range of anti-Semites, homophobes and conspiracy theorists,” according to the UK Daily Mail. Corbyn said that British Zionists “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.”
Other speakers at the conference included Daud Abdullah, who called for attacks against the Royal Navy and led a boycott against Holocaust Memorial Day.
Corbyn has been heavily criticized for these unearthed remarks. For instance, the UK Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone wrote on Friday that while he has been defending Corbyn in a string of recent controversies, the “no sense of English irony” comment is “unquestionably anti-Semitic.”
“To generalize about any race or religion is discriminatory,” Hattenstone wrote. “And if there were ever a clear example of somebody conflating Zionist with Jews, this appears to be it. Let’s play the traditional ‘swap the minority’ game. Instead of ‘Zionists’ let’s make it, say, Muslims or African-Caribbeans or Asians or Irish needing lessons in history or irony. Not nice, eh?”
Corbyn has also come under fire for laying a wreath at the graves of the Munich 1972 terrorists.
