Jeremy Corbyn was engulfed in a fresh row over Israel when he appeared to compare the government of Binyamin Netanyahu to Islamic extremists at the launch of an independent review into antisemitism in the Labour party.
In prepared remarks, Corbyn said: “Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or organisations.”
Later, in response to a question – met with jeers from an audience with a strong pro-Corbyn presence – the Labour leader denied he had compared Israel to Islamic State. However, he made a further apparent reference to violent Islamic extremists.
“The point is that you shouldn’t say to someone that just because they’re Jewish you must have an opinion on Israel, any more that you say to anyone who’s a Muslim you must have an opinion on the vile actions being taken by people misquoting the good name of Islam in what they do,” he said.
A spokesman for Corbyn later clarified that in his speech the Labour leader had been referring to states of an Islamic character, giving the examples of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran or Hamas in Gaza.
The report (pdf), published on Thursday after a two-month inquiry, said Labour members “should resist the use of Hitler, Nazi and Holocaust metaphors, distortions and comparisons in debates about Israel-Palestine”.
Responding to the report, Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, welcomed Chakrabarti’s rejection of abusive language.
But he added: “It is deeply regrettable that [Corbyn] went on to establish some sort of equivalence between Israel and terrorist groups such as Isis. This is completely unacceptable.”
Corbyn and Shami Chakrabarti, the author of the report into antisemitism, declined to comment on remarks made by the former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who was suspended by the party after saying Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism. Livingstone was still under investigation, said Chakrabarti, so “it would be completely wrong to comment”.
More broadly, she said epithets such as “Zio” and “Paki” had no place in Labour party discourse, along with racial or religious tropes and stereotypes about any group of people.
“Critical and abusive reference to any particular person or group based on actual or perceived physical characteristics cannot be tolerated,” said the report’s conclusions.
The Labour MP Ruth Smeeth walked out of the press conference after being accused of colluding with the Daily Telegraph in a row over leaflets criticising MPs opposed to Corbyn’s continued leadership.
In a later statement, Smeeth said: “I was verbally attacked by a Momentum activist and Jeremy Corbyn supporter who used traditional antisemitic slurs to attack me for being part of a ‘media conspiracy’.
“It is beyond belief that someone could come to the launch of a report on antisemitism in the Labour party and espouse such vile conspiracy theories about Jewish people, which were ironically highlighted as such in Ms Chakrabarti’s report, while the leader of my own party stood by and did absolutely nothing.”
She called on Corbyn to resign, and said she had made a formal complaint to the Labour party general secretary and the chair of the parliamentary Labour party.
Corbyn refused to take questions on the challenge to his leadership or whether he intended to remain at the helm of the party. “I am the leader,” he said.
Corbyn, who was greeted with whoops and cheers as he stood at the podium, criticised “hateful language” used by some of the most prominent pro-leave campaigners in the referendum debate, naming Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage.
He acknowledged that he had had a “torrid few days”. When he was elected as Labour leader he had called for kinder, gentler politics, he said. “Sadly, this is still a work in progress.”
Chakrabarti made a string of recommendations about Labour party procedural rules, but said no one should face a lifetime ban. There should be a moratorium following the report’s publication before any further disciplinary actions are taken, “to give people an opportunity to learn and go forward”, she said.
The report – dedicated to the murdered MP Jo Cox – said: “The test of a modern progressive political party should be surely not whether it has problems, but how it chooses to address them.”
In her comments, Chakrabarti said she looked forward to other parties following suit in the light of a rise in racist and xenophobic abuse in recent days.
Danny Rich, senior rabbi of Liberal Judaism, said that although he did not believe the Labour party was institutionally antisemitic, Livingstone’s comments and other rhetoric had made an independent inquiry necessary.
He added: “Jeremy Corbyn’s comment at the press conference, which paralleled Israel and Islamic State, makes me wonder whether he, at least, has learned anything at all from the inquiry.”
Rabbi Avrohom Pinter, an ultra-Orthodox Jew and a member of the Labour party, said that while he agreed that the party was not overrun with antisemitism, “it is sadly more of a problem in Labour than the other established parties. I have personally experienced this on many occasions in my local Labour party.”
Corbyn’s comments about Israel and Islamic states were unfortunate, he added. “This is symptomatic of the feeling that exists in many sections of the Labour party. One can disagree with the policies of the Israeli government, but to compare the democratically elected representatives of a sovereign state to a terrorist regime who publicly behead people is completely unacceptable.”
- This story was amended on 30 June 2016 to correct the quotation in the second paragraph. An earlier version quoted Corbyn as saying: “Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Islamic friends are responsible for Islamic State.”