A recently unearthed video of UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbym shows the potential prime minister saying in 2009 that Palestinian terrorists become suicide bombers as a result of “life under occupation.”
Corbyn, at a Cambridge Union Society debate about Israel, said that when he was visiting Nablus he asked a group of young Palestinians how they viewed suicide bombers. After being initially defensive, the Palestinians told him that they all knew someone who had been “involved with suicide bombing.”
“None of them agreed with it,” Corbyn said. “But every one of them knew why they did it. They said: put yourself in our place. A life of hopelessness. A life under occupation. A life of demoralization and bitterness. That is where it leads to.”
I unearthed a video of Jeremy Corbyn expressing sympathy with Hamas suicide bombers. He met Palestinians who knew suicide bombers: “none of them agreed with it. But they knew why they did it. They said put yourself in our place”. pic.twitter.com/zD3f9zS0TZ
— Iggy Ostanin (@magnitsky) February 22, 2019
According to the Jerusalem Post, Corbyn’s answer was part of his argument as to why Israel doesn’t contribute enough to the peace process.
A Labour Party spokesman told the Post, “Jeremy Corbyn was reporting what was said to him by a group of young Palestinians, who all opposed suicide bombing. Jeremy, obviously, condemns suicide bombing.”
The Post’s report notes that a 2007 Hebrew University study conducted by associate public policy professor Claude Berrebi found “that Palestinians with higher income levels and a higher levels of education were actually more likely to have been suicide bombers.”
“Both higher education and standard of living appear to be positively associated with membership in terror organizations such as Hamas or PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and with becoming a suicide bomber,” Berrebi wrote.
The video comes as nine Labour Party members of parliament (MP) resigned from the party as a result of anti-Semitism plaguing the party under Corbyn’s leadership.
“I am appalled at the offense and distress Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party have caused Jewish people,” MP Ian Austin, who announced he was leaving the Labour Party on Feb. 22, said. “It is a terrible that a culture of extremism, anti-semitism and intolerance is driving out good MPs and decent people who have committed their life to mainstream politics.”
