Liverpool– Hamas terrorists who murdered hundreds of innocent civilians in an attack on Israel were applauded at a left wing event in the sidelines of the Labour conference today.
The clapping for the bloody violence broke out among the audience at a meeting to mark 75 years since the Nakba or ‘catastrophe’ – which led to the creation of the Jewish state.
It came as one of the speakers at the event said she was ‘honoured’ to be speaking at such a ‘historic moment’.
More than 100 people attended the event at The World Transformed, a left wing festival that is not officially linked to Labour but which sprang up while Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader.
Yasmin Elsouda, an activist and member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, told the audience: ‘I’m honoured to be speaking at such an historic moment, certainly in my lifetime, in our struggle…
Meanwhile Mr Corbyn, who is still a Labour member despite being kicked out of the parliamentary party, refused to say if he directly condemned Hamas when quizzed by reporters in Liverpool today.
The ex-Labour leader pointed to a statement he issued yesterday over the violence during tetchy exchanges with journalists.
‘Why are you interrputing me?,’ Mr Corbyn said.
‘Yesterday I sent out a statement calling for a ceasefire, calling for peace and calling for an end to the occupation of Palestine which, of course, is fundamentally the background to the whole issue.
‘Obviously all attacks are wrong.’
Mr Corbyn has sat in the House of Commons as an independent since October 2020 after being suspended as a Labour MP over his response to a critical anti-semitism report.
He had posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, yesterday: ‘The unfolding events in Israel and Palestine are deeply alarming.
‘We need an immediate ceasefire and urgent de-escalation. And we need a route out of this tragic cycle of violence: ending the occupation is the only means of achieving a just and lasting peace.’
Hamas has been proscribed as a terror group in its entirety in the UK since 2021.
At the Labour conference fringe event, which was not attended by Mr Corbyn, Ms Elsouda went on to outline attacks on Palestinians by the Israeli authorities in the run-up to the brutal break out from Gaza that left hundreds dead and saw women and children kidnapped by militants.
She added: ‘Yesterday over 230 of our siblings… ascended to martyrdom at the hands of the Zionist entity.
‘The current Zionist government has in no uncertain words been calling for genocide, another Nakba.
‘Despite this, our Palestinian resistance has once again taken the failed Zionist entity by surprise and has declared enough is enough.’
Later, Ms Elsouda was cheered a second time when she said: ‘Yesterday the Palestinian resistance crossed the fence that contained more than a million refugees … so are we only willing to support Palestinians rising up when they are held at the fence and shot down?
‘Or are we serious about the return, the liberation of colonised lands? These are the questions of our time and we have a responsibility to rise up and do the bare minimum, a colonise people’s right to resist.’
Freelance journalist Zoe Holman, who chaired the event, started with ‘a brief moment of silence … to consider events and the losses not only of the last days but of the last decades and the last century in the region’.
It lasted about 25 seconds, after which she told the audience: ‘We are here at a very unexpectedly dramatic moment in the region.
‘The developments of the past days reflect the violent outcomes of the process of colonialism, occupation and apartheid that has taken place over almost a century. They are a reminder of the urgency of the campaign for Palestinian justice.’
Families across Israel woke up yesterday expecting to celebrate one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar together.
Instead, the festival of Simchat Torah became a day of terror and bloodshed for residents living near the Gaza Strip.
The peace of the holy Sabbath was shattered in the early morning as marauding Hamas gunmen invaded the streets in places such as Sderot, a city less than a mile from the border.
