UK Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn hosted a meeting with radical Islamists, including activists affiliated with the Hamas terror organization, in the British Parliament just months before he became head of the UK Labour Party, a new report revealed Tuesday.
According to a report by the Daily Mail, in 2015, six months before he won control of Labour and became Opposition Leader, Corbyn hosted a meeting in Parliament with a group of Hamas backers and other radical Islamists.
Photographs provided by the Daily Mail show Corbyn sitting with the Islamists and other controversial figures, and in one case, posing with an Arab journalist who called for Iran to bomb Israel.
Among the participants in the meeting was Daud Abdullah, the ex-deputy secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain who later founded the British Muslim Initiative, a group which purports to combat Islamophobia in Britain.
In 2009, Abdullah came under criticism for his support of the ‘Istanbul Declaration’ in the wake of Israel’s Cast Lead operation against the Hamas terror organization in Gaza. The declaration was made after British Premier Gordon Brown offered to use Royal Navy vessels to block the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip.
As part of the declaration, Abdullah and others called for Royal Navy vessels sent to the Gaza coast to be attacked.
Abdullah has a lengthy history of controversial positions not only regarding Israel, but also towards Jews generally. In 2005, Abdullah used his position in the Muslim Council of Britain to lead a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Other participants photographed at the meeting with Corbyn included Hamas activists Zaher al-Birawi and Mohammed Swalha, and journalist Azzam Tamimi, who has called for the ‘dissolution’ of Israel, and in a 2004 interview with the BBC expressed his longing to become a “martyr” on behalf of the Palestinian cause.
“I would do it if I had the opportunity,” Tamimi said.
Other pictures presented by the Daily Mail show Corbyn posing with the journalist Abdel Bari Atwan, who once expressed his hope to Lebanese media that Iran would bomb Israel.
“If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight,” Atway is quoted as saying.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that Corbyn attended a conference with senior Hamas terrorists including Husam Badran, who was given a 17-year sentence for his involvement in terrorist atrocities committed during the Second Intifada between 2001 and 2002.
The conference was also attended by Khaled Mashaal, the former leader of Hamas’ political bureau, who is on a UK sanction list, and Dr. Abdul Aziz Umar, who received seven life sentences for aiding in the preparation of a suicide belt.
Tuesday’s report is the latest in a series of scandals which have engulfed the UK Labour Party and Corbyn.
Dozens of Labour members have been suspended over their anti-Semitic statements in recent years, and Corbyn himself has been accused of holding anti-Semitic views by senior UK Jewish leaders. Corbyn has also been criticized for calling Hamas and Hezbollah his "friends" and for outright refusing to condemn those two terrorist organizations despite being urged to do so by local Jewish groups.
Last week, the Daily Mailpublished photos of Corbyn at a cemetery in Tunisia holding a wreath near the graves of some of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorists who were responsible for the massacre of the 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Days later, a picture emerged of Corbyn apparently making a salute linked to the Muslim Brotherhood organization.
Also last week, the Times of Londonpublished a picture of Corbyn meeting with the leader-in-exile of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization, only weeks before its members carried out an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue in which six people were murdered.