Israel “created” the anti-Semitism row engulfing the UK Labour Party, a trade union leader has been recorded suggesting.

According to audio released by the Independent, Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) general secretary Mark Serwotka suggested the Jewish state had driven a secret narrative to hide what he called its own “atrocities.”

Mr Serwokta, an ally of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, had told an event organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign there was no place for anti-Semitism in the Labour movement before moving to highlight what he alleged was the cause of constant criticism of the hard-left party and its membership.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the Labour Party allowed a lot of this to drag on, in a way that actually didn’t help anybody,” he said.

He then pointed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the deaths of Palestinian terrorists by Israeli troops as among the real issues being distracted from by “a summer of asking ourselves whether leading Labour movement people are in any way anti-Semitic?”

He added: “Isn’t it a funny old world when, instead of being on the front foot, denouncing these atrocities, demanding an independent and sovereign state for the Palestinian people, we have had a summer of asking ourselves whether leading Labour movement people are in any way anti-Semitic?

“Now I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I’ll tell you what – one of the best forms of trying to hide from the atrocities that you are committing is to go on the offensive and to actually create a story that does not exist for people on this platform, the trade union movement or, I have to say, for the leader of the Labour Party,” he concluded.

Mr. Serwotka is general secretary of the largest civil service trade union, the Public and Commercial Services Union, a post he has held since December 2000. He was re-elected in 2005, 2009 and 2014.

His assertion came on the same day a majority of UK Jews were found to believe Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic and the party he leads fosters a profound hatred of Jews, according to a poll conducted by the Jewish Chronicle.

The survey, undertaken by polling company Survation between August 12 and September 4, reveals 85.9 percent of British Jews regard the Labour leader as anti-Semitic, while just 8.3 percent believe he is not.