Meet 'Corbyn's brain,' who may be responsible for Labour antisemitism

Adviser Seumas Milne said that Hamas had "regained credibility as a resistance force" in 2012, as the terror group demonstrated the ability to launch rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Britain's Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn with Seumas Milne. (photo credit: HANNAH MCKAY/ REUTERS)
Britain's Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn with Seumas Milne.
(photo credit: HANNAH MCKAY/ REUTERS)
Links between Jeremy Corbyn's closest advisor and Middle Easter terror groups were revealed in a report by the Daily Mail on Sunday.
Seumas Milne has expressed support for terrorist organizations for decades, and has a similarly long record of defending Russian/Soviet interests.
Milne travelled to meet Hamas leaders, with Corbyn, in 2010 on a trip organized by Hamas sympathizers in the UK. Back when he was a student at Oxford in 1977, Milne met terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon.
Milne cofounded the Oxford Palestine Campaign with Palestinian activist Hussein Agha, who described him as "not anti-Semitic, but he was very, very anti-Israel. He went to Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank- a young boy on a Leftist grand tour. He adopted a Palestinian accent. He used to speak English with Arabs the way they spoke to him." He added that Milne met with representatives from Fatah, the largest group in the PLO and led at the time by Yasser Arafat.
As recently as 2009, Milne wrote that "the idea that Israel is a racist state is largely uncontroversial," while in 2012 he wrote that Hamas had "regained credibility as a resistance force," as the terror group managed to fire rockets all the way to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Regarding the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, Milne opined in the New Statesman that he didn't "see why military and economic assistance to a progressive government, which is carrying out the most basic democratic reforms (education, women's rights, land reform) in the teeth of opposition from a tribal and feudal-based, foreign-backed, reactionary rebellion, should be considered 'imperialism.'" He has also defended the Russian wars against Ukraine and Georgia in recent years.
Because of these views, some security figures in the UK doubted whether Milne would be cleared by British intelligence to receive classified information. The former head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1999 to 2004, Sir Richard Dearlove, said that if Corbyn became prime minister he would have to sever contact with Milne, as the latter posed a threat to national security.
Other of Milne's past statements included criticizing Americans two days after the September 11, 2001 attacks for their "unabashed national egotism and arrogance," and support for the Iranian regime during the 2009 protests in the country, disparaging the protesters as "Tehran's gilded youth."
As for corbyn's relationship with him, a senior staff member for the Labour Party said, "Without a shadow of a doubt, Corbyn trusts Milne more than anyone. I actually think Corbyn is a little bit thick. It's no exaggeration to say that Milne is Corbyn's brain."