After photos surfaced of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attending a wreath-laying ceremony for terrorists behind the 1972 attack at the Munich Olympics, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ripped into Corbyn, calling for an “unequivocal condemnation from everyone — left, right and everything in between.”
The photos, shared by the Daily Mail on Friday, show Corbyn in the Tunisian “Martyrs Cemetery” in 2014 where he reportedly claims he was attending a ceremony to commemorate the 47 Palestinians killed at a Tunisian Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) base in 1985. But after a Daily Mail reporter visited the ceremony, they discovered that the place where Corbyn was pictured was actually 15 yards away from where the monument for the airstrike victims was located; instead, Corbyn was in front of the plaque next to the graves of members of the terrorist organization Black September.
Black September is the terrorist organization responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympic terrorist attack in which they received help from West-German neo-Nazis to kidnap 11 Israeli Olympic team members, held them hostage, and ultimately murder them.
According to The Guardian, Corbyn responded by claiming he was at a wreath-laying ceremony for “some of those who were killed in Paris in 1992” and said that he was present but “I don’t think I was actually involved in it.”
“I was only there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere because we have to end it,” he added. “You cannot pursue peace by a cycle of violence; the only way you can pursue peace [is] by a cycle of dialogue.”
A spokesperson for the Labour party also claimed, “Jeremy did not lay any wreath at the graves of those alleged to have been linked to the Black September organisation or the 1972 Munich killings. He of course condemns that terrible attack, as he does the 1985 bombing.”
Netanyahu fired back Monday calling for the condemnation of Corbyn for “the laying of a wreath” on “the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre” and for “his comparison of Israel to the Nazis.”
Corbyn responded to Netanyahu, claiming his “claims about my actions and words are false.”
The International Olympic Committee rejected an international campaign in support of a minute of silence at the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics to honor the Israeli victims on the 40th anniversary of the massacre. Jacques Rogge, the IOC President, called such an action “inappropriate,” yet the opening ceremony included a memorium for the victims of the July 2005 London bombings. Israeli Olympian Shaul Ladany, who survived the 1972 attack, commented: “I do not understand. I do not understand, and I do not accept it.”