Labour’s leader must be judged by the company he has willingly kept

I was at school when the Israeli athletes were murdered at the Munich Olympics but remember it well. The drama unfolded before breakfast time and was still going on in the evening, a day book-ended by terror. The BBC’s coverage was one of the first examples of what we now call rolling news and was marked out by the shocked, hushed and sober commentary of David Coleman, more used to excitedly shouting a British gold medal hero like David Hemery over the finishing line.

For hours the cameras were trained on the room in the Olympic Village where the athletes were held by eight terrorists from the Black September faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Occasionally, a balaclava-wearing gunman could be seen on the balcony as negotiations continued with the German authorities.

The kidnappers demanded the release of hundreds of prisoners and then asked for a bus to take them and their hostages to the airport, where after a bungled ambush by the security forces the athletes were all killed by their captors and four terrorists shot dead.

It was in the cemetery in Tunis containing the grave of one of the PLO leaders who masterminded these attacks that a wreath-bearing Jeremy Corbyn was photographed in 2014. The Labour leader appears to have difficulty remembering this event, changing his story several times. “I was present when [the wreath] was laid,” he said. “I don’t think I was actually involved in it.”

Well, I’m afraid I just don’t believe him. More than that, I suspect that when the Israeli athletes were kidnapped, his sympathies lay with the Black September organisation. I am not saying he condoned the murders; but at the age of 23 his political ideology had already been formed.