Jeremy Corbyn deserves Chief Rabbi Mirvis rebuke

The unprecedented warning by Britain’s Chief Rabbi about rampant anti-Semitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is a stark reminder of the heavy responsibility facing British voters next month. There are countless reasons for them to ensure the lunar-left Mr Corbyn and his comrades do not end up in Downing Street. But none is more compelling than what Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis termed the “poison” of anti-Semitism that has gained momentum under Mr Corbyn. The Labour leader has boasted of his “friendship” with terrorist groups such as Hamas, whose charter commits it to the extermination of every Jew.

Never before has a British chief rabbi felt compelled to intervene in an election in such a way. Rabbi Mirvis is normally non-political. His view that Mr Corbyn is “unfit for high office” deserves to resonate with voters, especially with those who traditionally support Labour. Mr Corbyn’s claims that he has “investigated every case” of anti-Semitism within his party have been dismissed by Rabbi Mirvis as “mendacious fiction”. Christian, Sikh, Muslim and Hindu leaders, to their credit, are supporting the Chief Rabbi.

As Rabbi Mirvis said, anti-Semitism at the heart of a party that potentially could win the election raises serious concerns about Britain’s “moral compass”. Post World War II, when the UK became a refuge for so many Jewish emigres, British Jews mostly voted Labour. That changed when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. But many returned to Labour under Tony Blair.

Mr Corbyn can protest all he likes that Rabbi Mirvis got it wrong when he spoke of “the deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews” because of the rising tide of anti-Semitism. But the evidence is clear. Anti-Zionist conspiracy theories about malign Jewish power, long embedded in the British left, of which Mr Corbyn is a longstanding pillar, have infected Labour. Mr Corbyn’s insistence, after the Chief Rabbi’s intervention, that “anti-Semitism in any form is vile and wrong … it is an evil within our society … there is no place for it — and under a Labour government it will not be tolerated in any form whatsoever” rings hollow when judged against his own history. He has form.

Apart from his expressed “friendship” for terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, which are hellbent on the destruction of Israel, Mr Corbyn attended a wreath-laying ceremony in 2014 at a memorial in Tunisia honouring Palestinians linked to the murders of 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics. “I was present … (but) I don’t think I was actually involved in it,” he said when his attendance was disclosed.

In 2010 Mr Corbyn hosted a discussion in which Israelis were compared with Nazis and parallels drawn between Israel’s blockade of Gaza and Nazi Germany’s sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad. In 2012 he defended an artist’s “freedom of speech” but did not condemn a London mural depicting Jewish bankers playing Monopoly on a board balanced on workers’ bent backs.

Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and Israel’s former deputy prime minister, likened Mr Corbyn’s criticism of Israel to the rhetoric deployed in Stalin’s Russia. Last year, when dissident Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by Russian nerve agent novichok in the English town of Salisbury, Mr Corbyn doubted the word of those who pointed to Kremlin involvement. In an appearance on Iranian TV in 2015 Mr Corbyn declared the killing of Osama bin Laden “a tragedy upon a tragedy” and said the world’s most wanted terrorist should have been put on trial. Following last month’s operation that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Mr Corbyn lamented it would have been better if he had been arrested.

Now one of Britain’s most influential religious leaders has raised the alarm, and a poll in The Jewish Chronicle newspaper suggests 40 per cent of Britain’s 300,000 Jews are “seriously considering” migrating. Mr Corbyn deserves the Chief Rabbi’s blistering rebuke.