ExtremismIn Israel, former British PM Blair brands Labour leader Corbyn an anti-Semite

Published 4 June 2019

The leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, is an anti-Semite, former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said Monday during a visit to Israel. Blair – who was leader of the Labour Party from 1994 and Prime Minister from 1997 until his resignation in 2007 – slammed the “shameful” anti-Semitism crisis that has engulfed his party, when asked if he believed Corbyn himself was anti-Semitic.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair // Source: wikipedia.org

The leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, is an anti-Semite, former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said Monday during a visit to Israel.

Blair – who was leader of the Labour Party from 1994 and Prime Minister from 1997 until his resignation in 2007 – slammed the “shameful” anti-Semitism crisis that has engulfed his party, when asked if he believed Corbyn himself was anti-Semitic.

“Some of the remarks are not explicable in any other way, I’m afraid, and that is sad,” Blair told a panel event at Bar Ilan University outside Tel Aviv. “Does he think he is? No, he doesn’t think he is at all.”

Channel 12’s Yonit Levi went on to ask Blair if he thought the Labour Party was institutionally anti-Semitic. The former premier answered that when he “established [the Equality and Human Rights Commission], I never dreamed it would be investigating the Labour party.”

The EHRC announced last week a full statutory investigation against the party over its failure to stamp out anti-Semitism in its ranks and to investigate if the party had “unlawfully discriminated” against people because they are Jewish.

“Do you recognize the Labour Party today?” Levi asked. “No,” Blair replied. “The leadership is from the far Left.

“If you told me, not merely back in May 1997, but at any point in the next 10 years, that the party I led for 13 years would have a problem with anti-Semitism, I would literally not have credited it, or believed it, and yet it is, and it’s there today,” he added.

Blair warned that the anti-Semitism crisis could bring down the entire party, which was once the natural political home for many British Jews. He said he was horrified by the number of Jews who say that if Corbyn is elected Prime Minister, they will leave the country.

Identifying anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism, Blair noted an urgent need to educate younger generations on what Zionism means, because for them it has become “something you would criticize but not support.”

This article is published courtesy of The Tower