Labour MP Burgon speaks at pro-Palestine event with lawyer linked to terror group

Labour MP Richard Burgon appeared as a speaker at an event held inside Westminster at which the main address was delivered by a man repeatedly linked to a Palestinian terrorist organisation, Jewish News can reveal.

The Leeds North MP spoke on Wednesday night at a hush-hush event held in a Westminster committee room at which the controversial Palestinian activist Shawan Jabarin gave the main speech.

Jabarin, now director of the Al-Haq organisation, was convicted in 1985 by Israel of  recruiting and arranging training for members for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

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Subsequent evidence provided by Israel over many years has continued to show Jabarin’s close links to the PFLP,  who were one of the Palestinian terror organisations involved in the 2023 October 7 attacks inside Israel.

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One attendee at Wednesday evening’s meeting said pro-Jeremy Corbyn MP Burgon was loudly applauded after he delivered his speech to a full room at the event ahead of Jabarin’s main address.

Video footage in 2017 showed Jabarin participating at a meeting of Palestinian groups that included the PFLP and Hamas, who were represented at the time by  Yahya Sinwar, widely regarded as the mastermind behind the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel.

The PFLP, an EU-designated terror group and longtime ally of Hamas in Gaza, participated in the atrocities of October 7, and shared videos on its website celebrating the attacks against “occupation army troops and the herds of their settlers” in southern Israel.

Burgon, who has long been outspoken on the Palestinian issue, appeared on a panel at Tuesday’s meeting which was organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and the British Palestinian Committee.

Hours earlier he appeared in the Commons telling MPs he was “sick of empty statements on Gaza” as he called for sanctions against Israel over the “genocide” it was committing.

Also speaking in Committee Room 10 were PSC director Ben Jamal and British Palestinian Committee Chair Aimee Shalan.  The event followed a lobby day held by the PSC in parliament, at which Corbyn and Diane Abbott were among those photographed meeting with activists.

Anti-Israel MP Apsana Begum has also been advertised as a speaker alongside Jabarin at next Saturday’s PSC-led demonstration  in central London.

In 2007 the Israeli Supreme Court was revealed to have again rejected Jabarin’s appeal to travel abroad, stating that “the current petitioner is apparently acting as a manner of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, acting some of the time as the CEO of a human rights organisation, and at other times as an activist in a terror organization which has not shied away from murder and attempted murder, which have nothing to do with rights…”

One year later the same Supreme Court said he is “among the senior activists of the Popular Front terrorist organisation.”

While Jabarin has denied the claims, he has frequently been seen attending events organised by the PFLP, including in July 2021, when  attended an event in memory of Suha Jarrar, daughter of PFLP leader Khalida Jarrar and an Environmental and Gender Policy Researcher at Al-Haq.

The hall was decorated with PFLP logos.

Two years earlier he was at an event hosted by the PFLP in memory of “comrade fighter” Maher Al-Yamani. Al- Yamani was a PFLP “founder,” a “member of the Central Committee and one of its most prominent military commanders,” and “coordinated special operations…in particular the operation against an aircraft of the Israeli company El Al in July 1968 in Greece.”

Jabarin has also been barred from entering Jordan on security grounds.

Burgon’s decision to speak at Tuesday night’s event will once again spark calls for Labour to sanction him.  Keir Starmer sacked him from the shadow cabinet on becoming leader of the party.

In 2019 he was forced to apologise after footage emerged of him saying Zionism is the “enemy of peace”.

Last year Burgon was one of four Labour MPs who lost the whip for voting against the government on the two-child benefit cap. His suspension was lifted in February this year.

One Labour source this week labelled him a “bad faith actor” in regards to his conduct over the Israel-Palestine issue.

Jabarin became Al-Haq’s director in 2006, and is respected as a human-rights activist by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, and various Palestinian human-rights groups.

They have supported his claims that he is the victim of a “smear” campaign in relation to PFLP links.

Under his leadership of Al Haq, according to one source, “Al Haq’s staff of Palestinian and foreign researchers have shifted their search for legal redress from Israel’s military and civilian courts to foreign venues.

The group is currently bringing a legal case against the UK government over the continued export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel. The case is being heard in the High Court this week.

Jewish News has contacted Burgon and Labour for comment.