Anti-Semitism allegations against UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn left him “so upset” he was powerless to act and defuse the issue, his colleague Emily Thornberry has reportedly said.
The shadow foreign secretary revealed Mr. Corbyn has not dealt with the scandal “properly” and found it “difficult to deal with the problem” because claims had been directed against him personally. She said:
When people accused Jeremy of being an antisemite, he was so upset, and as a result he has found it difficult to deal with the problem. He hasn’t dealt with it properly, but to call him antisemitic is wrong.
Thornberry made her claim during an on-stage interview with Jon Lansman – founder of pro-Corbyn group Momentum – at a Jewish charity event.
The Jewish News reports she conceded the way the party conducted itself over the summer was “shameful”, but leaders are not “Gods, they aren’t perfect”.
Thornberry said new Labour members from the far left who had been involved with Palestine advocacy and suffered from “lazy, undisciplined thinking” when they equated all Jews with Israel.
“It’s not Jews. It’s not even Israelis. It’s the Israeli government,” she stressed.
Claims of institutional anti-Semitism in the Labour Party have dominated headlines for the last year with the party seemingly powerless to put an end to the allegations.
Just two days ago the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organisation that researches the Holocaust and contemporary anti-Semitism, named Mr. Corbyn’s handling of anti-Semitism in Labour in their annual list of top-ten worst incidents for the year.
In September a crushing majority of UK Jews said they Mr. Corbyn is anti-Semitic and the party he leads fosters a profound hatred of Jews.
A survey, undertaken by polling company Survation between August 12 and September 4, revealed 85.9 percent of British Jews regard the Labour leader as anti-Semitic, while just 8.3 percent believe he is not.
This is a marked increase from a recent Survation poll among the general public, which found 39 percent said Mr. Corbyn was anti-Semitic.
Thornberry accepted there was a “far-left caricature” of equating capitalism with Jews, and the party has a fight to win over the trust of Jewish voters.
She added that she was personally “heartbroken” at Labour losing trust with the electorate, adding: “Why should people trust us, given what’s happened?”
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