The latest smear by the Times attempts to smear Jeremy Corbyn by association with a Jewish Holocaust survivor.
In 2010, according to the Murdoch rag, Jeremy Corbyn:
spoke at and opened a talk entitled Never Again — for Anyone. The event was part of a UK tour called Never Again for Anyone — Auschwitz to Gaza.
So far, so what? The talk was in the House of Commons, Corbyn was attending in his role as an MP and possibly as a representative of the London Regional Select Committee, of which he was a member.
The Times has nothing to offer to indicate Corbyn said anything controversial during his talk and cannot claim that Corbyn had anything to do with the content of Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer’s talk. It insinuates – but cannot quite bring itself to claim – that Corbyn should have done something about Meyer’s claims.
The Times then tries to smear Corbyn for praising Meyer before the meeting, at which point he knew nothing about what Meyer would say at the meeting.
Corbyn responded to the Times’ request for comment by saying he was sorry about any ‘concerns or anxiety’ people might have about his activities ‘in pursuit of justice‘ for Palestinians. The Times describes this as ‘an extraordinary apology‘ – but in reality it’s just a human being’s concern for the feelings of others.
But the article comes unstuck when trying to imply some kind of antisemitism on the part of the Labour leader, because Corbyn’s parliamentary record at the time – as it did before then and has since – shows him standing squarely side by side with Jewish people:
The absence of Early Day Motions (EDMs) supporting Jewish people after June 2015 is simply because he became the Labour leader and by convention front-benchers do not sign EDMs.
Comment:
The smears are growing more desperate, the associations and claims more tenuous and the Establishment’s motives more transparent – so transparent that people are increasingly seeing through them, as Labour’s resilient recent polling demonstrates.
The problem the Establishment faces is that the evidence consistently shows Jeremy Corbyn as a decent, compassionate and empathetic human being – a rarity among political leaders, perhaps, but one with which the public instinctively connects.
And his courtesy to an 85-year-old Auschwitz survivor – as the late Meyer was at the time – points as resolutely toward that decency as does his parliamentary voting record.
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