Board of Deputies of British Jews President Marie van der Zyl has reacted to Jeremy Corbyn’s comments made to Philip Schofield on ITV today.
Marie said: “In an appearance on ITV, after again being asked five times for an apology on his party’s inability to deal with the antisemitism in its ranks, Mr Corbyn finally said he was ‘very sorry for everything that has happened’, but immediately added ‘I am dealing with it. I have dealt with it. Other parties are also affected by antisemitism.’
“Thousands of complaints have been made to Labour about cases of antisemitism from members; the 130 open cases often cited ignores many cases in which members were let off with a slap on the wrist for the most egregious antisemitism.
“Mr Corbyn has not dealt with it in the past few years; whether he will deal with it now remains to be seen. While we can and do criticise cases of antisemitism from other parties when these arise, we would resist any attempt to deflect from Labour’s antisemitism problem by claiming that any serious rival party has the same issue with Jew-hate. When it comes to antisemitism, no other mainstream party in British society has anything close to Labour’s current problem.”