Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called on the West to confront “the Zionist lobby” in an article published in July 2011, following the arrest of Palestinian hate preacher Sheikh Raed Salah, who heads the Hamas-aligned Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

In a 2011 article for the far-left Morning Star, Corbyn attacked the media for promoting “hysteria” about Salah, saying it was “time that Western governments stood up to the Zionist lobby which seems to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.”

It continues: “[Raed Salah] wishes to remain here long enough to fight for his name. The sadness is that his is a voice of Palestinian people that needs to be heard.”

By the time Corbyn was writing, Salah had been accused of spreading the anti-Semitic blood libel that Jews drink the blood of children during a speech in East Jerusalem in February 2007.

In 2012, Corbyn invited Salah for tea in parliament and described the hate preacher as “a very honoured citizen” whose “voice must be heard.” Saleh was found by a British court to have used the blood libel and was excluded from Britain because of concerns over his “virulent anti-Semitism.”

The hate preacher’s group was outlawed by the Israeli security cabinet in 2015 due to its close ties with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and Salah himself was sentenced to eleven months in prison for incitement to violence.

In 2014, Salah was filmed delivering a sermon in Nazareth in which he said, “Inshallah, Jerusalem will soon become the capital of a global caliphate.

“The caliphate will spread justice throughout the land after it was filled with injustice by America, the Zionist enterprise, the Batiniyya, reactionism, Paganism and the Crusaders,” Salah added.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “There was widespread criticism of the attempt to deport Raed Salah, including from Jews for Justice for Palestinians, and his appeal against deportation succeeded on all grounds.“

[Photo: ITV News / YouTube ]