Board president urges Corbyn apology over wreath-laying after ‘being evasive’

The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Marie van der Zyl, has said Jeremy Corbyn should apologise for his attendance at the Palestinian memorial ceremony in Tunisia.

“After days of being evasive, Jeremy Corbyn has now admitted attending a memorial event for the terrorist murders of unarmed athletes. How can you say he is not involved?” she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

“In 1972, these are unarmed people who were attending the Olympics, they were savagely mutilated and murdered. There is no reason Jeremy Corbyn should not apologise to the widows and to the victims for this terrible massacre.

“He needs to also recognise that he can’t cavort with terrorists. Nothing is moving forward with Jeremy Corbyn. He is completely evasive. This Twitter war with Benjamin Netanyahu clearly shows his lack of credibility.”

Jeremy Corbyn has said that he did lay a wreath during a ceremony at the Palestinian Martyrs’ Cemetery in Tunis in 2014.

The Labour leader told Channel 4 News that the wreath was to commemorate those killed in a 1985 Israeli air raid on the PLO offices in the city.

“I witnessed many other people laying many wreaths,” he said.

“I laid one wreath along with many other people, as I have said, in memory of all those who died in the awful attack in 1985, which, as I keep repeating, was condemned by the whole world.”