CAA reacts to Jeremy Corbyn’s article in The Guardian

Jeremy Corbyn has released an article in The Guardian in response to the Jewish community’s concerns.

Gideon Falter, Chairman of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “This statement from Jeremy Corbyn bears all of the hallmarks of his spin doctors’ usual techniques. He has released a vague and meaningless article, just as the Jewish community goes home to begin the sabbath. He has tried to divide and conquer by dismissing the Jewish community’s unprecedented unity as ‘overheated rhetoric’, when that is exactly what he is guilty of. He has tried to shift attention to the far-right. And crucially, he has tried to make this about Israel when this is about antisemitism in his British Labour Party.

“There is no acknowledgement of his own role in this crisis. There is no apology for his antisemitic activity in the past, but he has hypocritically condemned as antisemitic behaviour that he himself has been guilty of. He has again preached to Jews that he is right to have rewritten the International Definition of Antisemitism.

“By his action over the years as well as by failing even now to take on board the full concerns of the Jewish community, we remain convinced that Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite and that under his leadership the once anti-racist Labour Party has become institutionally antisemitic and an existential threat to British Jewry.”