Israeli survivor of Munich massacre has ‘no doubt’ Corbyn is anti-Semitic
Former athlete professor Shaul Ladany urges the Labour leader to 'disappear' from politics
An Israeli athlete who survived the Munich Olympics massacre has urged Jeremy Corbyn to “disappear” from politics, saying he had “no doubt” he was an anti-Semite.
Professor Shaul Ladany, who competed in the 1972 Games as a race walker, strongly condemned the Labour leader’s presence at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Palestinian Martyrs’ Cemetery in Tunis in 2014.
Mr Corbyn has faced fierce criticism over his appearance at the cemetery which contains the graves of a number of the founders of the Black September terror group, which carried out the Munich massacre in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed.
He has strongly denied he is anti-Semitic and rejected calls to apologise, insisting the event was to commemorate the Palestinians killed in an Isreali air strike on the offices of the Palestinian Liberation Organistation in 1985, and he had not been there to honour Black September.
However, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Prof Ladany, 82, said he had been “really upset” by the pictures which have emerged of Mr Corbyn – who was still a backbencher at the time – at the event.
“He knows at present he cannot fully express himself totally openly because he might lose some of his voters. I don’t know him personally but from what I have read and heard I have no doubt that he is an anti-Semite,” he told the paper.
“He should disappear from the political scene. And I hope that it will happen.”
A spokesman for the Labour leader said: “Jeremy Corbyn visited the Palestine National Cemetery in Tunisia to support Palestinian rights and honour the victims of the illegal 1985 airstrike, many of whom were civilians, on the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s headquarters – an attack condemned by the UN.
“Jeremy did not honour those alleged to have been linked to the Black September organisation or the 1972 Munich killings. He of course condemns that terrible attack, as he does the 1985 bombing.”
Earlier the veteran Jewish Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge faced an angry backlash after she likened a recent Labour Party disciplinary investigation into her conduct to the persecution faced by Jews in Nazi Germany, saying she felt “as if they were coming for me”.
Dame Margaret said the inquiry into her confrontation with Mr Corbyn, in which she called him a racist and accused him of failing to deal with anti-Semitism in the party, left her “thinking what did it feel like to be a Jew in Germany in the Thirties”.
Her comments provoked a furious response from some Labour activists and supporters, who denounced what they said was her overreaction.
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