UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of giving his personal support to murderous anti-Israel Hamas terrorists who between them killed upwards of 600 people.

On an Iranian TV programme called “Remember Palestine” in 2012, the hard left politician described more than 1,000 convicted terrorists released by the Israeli government in a prisoner swap as “brothers”, and questioned if there was a “serious case” against them. Mr Corbyn said:

Well, you have to ask the question why they’re in prison in the first place and since the releases that took place after the hunger strike I met many of the brothers including the brother who has been speaking here when they came out of prison when I was in Doha earlier this year, and you just realise that this mass imprisonment of Palestinians is actually part of a much bigger political game. They are used as bargaining chips in political debate and political discussion, and because if there was the serious case against the individual prisoners that Israel claims there have been, then they wouldn’t win an appeal, they wouldn’t get out, they wouldn’t be released, but they are released in very large numbers. Corporal Shalit apparently equals the lives of a very, very large number of Palestinian people. Well I’m glad that those that were released, were released, and I hope they’re now in safe places.

Abdul Aziz Umar, who Mr. Corbyn refers to as a “brother”, was given seven life sentences after he helped in the preparation of a suicide vest detonated at a restaurant in Jerusalem in 2003, which killed seven innocent people.

MP Joan Ryan, chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, demanded an investigation into his “beyond abhorrent” comments.

The video release came just hours after the Times reported Mr. Corbyn had hosted a House of Commons event on Holocaust Memorial Day in 2010, at which the Israeli government was compared to the Nazis.

Mr Corbyn spoke at and opened a talk entitled Never Again — for Anyone. The event was part of a UK tour called Never Again for Anyone — Auschwitz to Gaza.

He has since issued an extraordinary apology.

Footage has also emerged of a speech Mr. Corbyn made at a rally outside Parliament in 2010 when he compared the blockade of Gaza to the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad in the Second World War.

He told the crowd: “I was in Gaza three months ago. I saw the mortar shells that had gone through the school buildings, the destroyed UN establishments, the burnt-out schools, the ruined homes, the destroyed lives, the imprisoned people, the psychological damage to a whole generation who’ve been imprisoned for as long as the siege of Leningrad and Stalingrad took place.” See below:

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The event came six months after Mr. Corbyn hosted a Holocaust Memorial Day event at which speakers are said to have likened the actions of Israel in Gaza to Hitler’s regime.

The latest revelations of systemic anti-Semitism and racism that run deep in the Labour Party follow Mr Corbyn’s steadfast refusal to sign up to the full internationally recognised definition of anti-Semitism.