Report: Jeremy Corbyn attended conference with senior Hamas figures
Besides Badran, participants of the conference included former Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal and Abdul Aziz Omar who was sentenced to seven life sentences.
By JULIANE HELMHOLDUpdated: AUGUST 21, 2018 03:31Britain's opposition Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn(photo credit: REUTERS/TOBY MELVILLE)
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attended a conference in Qatar in 2012 alongside senior Hamas figures who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis, according to an exclusive report by the British daily The Telegraph published Sunday.At the conference, Corbyn hosted a panel discussion which was attended by senior Hamas member Husam Badran, who was the leader of Hamas’s military wing in the northern West Bank and the orchestrator of some of the most deadly suicide bombings of the Second Intifada, for which he received a 17-year sentence.Besides Badran, participants of the conference included former Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal and Abdul Aziz Omar, who was sentenced to seven life sentences for his involvement in preparing explosive belts.Both Badran and Omar were released as part of the 2011 deal in which Gilad Shalit was swapped for 1,027 mainly Palestinian and Arab-Israeli prisoners.The conference in Qatar under the title “Seminar on Palestinian Refugees in the Arab World,” of which Corbyn was part, took place less than a year after the prisoner exchange.Several days after the conference, Corbyn commented that he had listened to people released in the Shalit deal and that their contribution was “fascinating” and “electrifying.”In an interview with Iranian television, he later confirmed specifically that he had met with Omar while at the conference.The revelation of this incident comes as the latest of a series of controversies involving the British Labour leader.Corbyn on wreath laying for Munich terrorists, August 13, 2018 (Reuters)Last week pictures emerged showing Corbyn alongside Tunisian terror chief Maher al-Taher at a 2014 wreath-laying ceremony for the terrorists who massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.Al-Taher is the leader-in-exile of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is classified as a terrorist organization in the US, Israel and the EU, and which claimed responsibility for the 2014 Har Nof synagogue massacre.
In another controversial photo of the event, Corbyn is seen close to the grave of terrorist Atef Bseiso, intelligence chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Bseiso, who was assassinated in Paris in 1992, was also linked to the Olympic massacre two decades earlier.Only a week prior, the Labour leader made headlines when a video emerged of a speech he gave in 2013, in which he ostensibly compared Israel’s control of the West Bank to the Nazi occupation of Europe during World War II.In addition, the Labour Party and Corbyn have been at the center of a protracted row over the party’s failure to address antisemitism within its ranks, and its recent decision to adopt an abridged version of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definitions, specifically omitting a clause that discourages comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
