by Ben Ariel
British Labour leader criticized over picture of him apparently making a salute linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is in hot water again, after a picture emerged of him apparently making a salute linked to the Muslim Brotherhood organization.
The photograph, published by the Daily Telegraph, shows Corbyn making the four-fingered Rabbi’ah sign, which is used by the Muslim Brotherhood as a symbol of support for the overthrow of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
The photo reportedly was taken during a visit by Corbyn to the Finsbury Park mosque in 2016.
A spokesman for the Labour leader explained he had been “standing up for democracy” when he used the Rabbi’ah symbol, reported the British Jewish News.
Counter-extremist activist and Jewish News columnist Maajid Nawaz said the Muslim Brotherhood was “to Muslims what the BNP are to the English: bigoted, identitarian and dangerous”.
“It should be as taboo for a left-wing politician to be associated with that group, as it is with the BNP,” added Nawaz.
A spokesman for Corbyn told the Telegraph in response, “The four fingered gesture is a well-known symbol of solidarity with the victims of the 2013 Rabaa massacre in Cairo.”
The photo is the latest in a series of controversies that have engulfed Corbyn and the Labour party in recent years.
Just this week, the Daily Mail published 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.
The Labour leader said he would not apologize for attending the event at the cemetery because he was trying to “promote peace in the Middle East”.
On Monday, he and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu clashed on Twitter when Netanyahu wrote, “The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone – left, right and everything in between.”
Corbyn later fired back and said Netanyahu’s accusations were false before adding, “What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza by Israeli forces since March - and a discriminatory nation state law sponsored by his government that formalizes the second class status of Arab citizens.”
Over the last several years, dozens of Labour members have been suspended over their anti-Semitic statements.
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.
Most recently, the party was criticized over its refusal to adopt in full the definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
Following the criticism, Corbyn published an op-ed in The Guardian, in which he acknowledged that the party has “a real problem” when it comes to anti-Semitism, but strongly rejected the idea that it poses any threat to the British Jewish community.
He subsequently published a video in which he acknowledged that anti-Semitism has surfaced in the party and apologized for “the hurt that has been caused to many Jewish people.”
Ben Ariel
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/250605
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