In a video of Great Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn recounting his conversations with Palestinians in 2009, Corbyn seemingly expressed his sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers.
The Jerusalem Post reported, “The debate, held by the Cambridge Union Society on October 29, 2009, was entitled ‘This House Believes that Israel Demands Too Much and Gives Too Little in the Peace Process,’ in which Corbyn, together with three others spoke in favor of the proposition.”
Corbyn stated, “And I remember asking a group of young Palestinians in Nablus, one time; I sat down with them and I said, ‘What do you think about suicide bombers? What do you think about it?’ And they said, ‘Why do you wanna know? Who are you?'”
Corbyn continued, “So I explained who I was and what I wanted to know for and so on, and after a while they relaxed and they talked. All of them knew somebody that had been, how shall we put it, involved with suicide bombing. None of them agreed with it.” Then he said heatedly, “But every one of them knew why they did it. They said: Put yourself in our place, a life of hopelessness, a life under occupation, a life of demoralization and bitterness: that is where it leads to.”
The Jerusalem Post noted that a 2007 study of suicide bombers, specifically Palestinian suicide bombers, conducted by Claude Berrebi, an Associate Professor of Public Policy at Hebrew University’s School of Public Policy, found that Palestinian suicide bombers were more likely to come from higher income levels and a higher level of education. Berrebi stated, “If income level and education are linked, at the micro level, to participation in terrorist activities, it is probably to the opposite effect of what the popular conventional wisdom assumes. Both higher education and standard of living appear to be positively associated with membership in terror organizations such as Hamas or PIJ and with becoming a suicide bomber.”
Asked about the 2009 video, a Labour Party Spokesperson said, “Jeremy Corbyn was reporting what was said to him by a group of young Palestinians, who all opposed suicide bombing. Jeremy, obviously, condemns suicide bombing.”
Yet after the Manchester bombing in 2017, in which Islamic terrorists murdered 22 people, Corbyn blamed the British government for wars it had involved Great Britain in, saying that there was a link between “wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home,” and adding, “An informed understanding of the causes of terrorism is an essential part of an effective response that will protect the security of our people, that fights rather than fuels terrorism.”
In 2015, six months before he became the leader of the Labour Party, Corbyn welcomed Islamic extremists to Parliament, including one man who signed a letter saying that the Royal Navy should be attacked if it prevented weapons from being smuggled to terror groups in Gaza and another who had stated he wanted to be a suicide bomber, adding, “Sacrificing myself for Palestine is a noble cause. It is the straight way to pleasing my God and I would do it if I had the opportunity.”
Video below: