Jeremy Corbyn faced fresh pressure over his links to Palestinian extremists today as it emerged he boasted of a ‘long takeaway dinner’ with the head of Hamas.
The Labour leader highlighted his meeting with Khaled Mashal in an article for the communist Morning Star newspaper in 2010.
The remarks surfaced as a poll found that more than a quarter of voters think Mr Corbyn is anti-Semitic – and nearly half believe Labour has a serious problem with the issue. The leadership has been engaged in a bitter battle with the Jewish communities after refusing to adopt the international definition of anti-Semitism in full in the party’s new code of conduct.

The Labour leader (pictured left in Falkirk today) highlighted his meeting with Khaled Mashal (pictured right) in an article for the communist Morning Star newspaper in 2010

Mr Corbyn was trying to move on from the crisis over his contacts with extremists as he visited a bus manufacturer in Falkirk today
Veteran left-winger Mr Corbyn has been under intense scrutiny since the Daily Mail revealed he attended a wreath-laying in Tunisia in 2014 for masterminds behind the Munich Olympics terror attack on Israeli athletes.
Mr Corbyn has previously come under fire for hailing Hamas – the military wing of which is a banned terrorist group in the UK – as his ‘friends’.
But in the article for the Morning Star, also published on the Labour List website, Mr Corbyn wrote about his trip to Gaza with a group of European politicians.
‘We were fed a takeaway dinner on tables in the wrecked debating chamber during our long meeting with Hamas Prime Minister Khaled Mashaal,’ he said.

Jeremy Corbyn is seen posing with a wreath under a distinctive red canopy as other politicians look on. This canopy runs alongside the graves of Salah Khalaf, Hayel Abdel-Hamid, Fakhri al-Omari and Atef Bseiso, three of whom have been linked to Black September, the group behind the 1972 atrocity at the Munich Olympic Games
Mashal, who was head of the Hamas politburo until last year, features on a terrorism financing restrictions list issued by the UK government in February.
Mr Corbyn, a lowly backbencher at the time, also risked controversy by condemning the Balfour Declaration, which paved the way for the creation of the state of Israel.
‘Britain has played a long and inglorious role in the region,’ he wrote.
‘It delivered the Balfour Declaration that established Israel after promising independence to the Arab peoples during WWI.
‘Understandably it is viewed with suspicion by Palestinians who have seen their country divided, their land stolen and their children killed.’
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: ‘Jeremy has a long and principled record of solidarity with the Palestinian people and engaging with actors in the conflict to support peace and justice in the Middle East. That is the right thing to do.’
Sources added that Mr Corbyn had ‘nothing to apologise for’ as he was meeting a ‘crucial’ Palestinian leader in a bid to find a ‘peaceful solution’ in the Middle East.
But Tory MP Michael Fabricant said: ‘More Corbyn nastiness.’
Meanwhile, a OnePoll survey for The Sun found 27 per cent of the public thought Mr Corbyn was anti-Semitic – something he fiercely denies.
More than one in three said he was unfit to be PM due to the row, and 47 per cent agreed that Labour has a serious problem with anti-Semitism.
The Labour leadership sparked a fresh wave of controversy last month by refusing to adopt the full definition of anti-Semitism drawn up by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Mr Corbyn is set to U-turn on the issue and cave in to calls to fully adopt it in order to avoid an embarrassing defeat by his own MPs next month.
But he risks sparking a fresh row with Jewish community groups as he is considering extra clauses to the definition in order to spell out that criticism of Israel is allowed.
Mr Corbyn has admitted he attended a memorial service in Tunis in 2014, where members of the Black September group were honoured.
The organisation was behind the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972, when 11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped and later killed.
But Mr Corbyn says he was there to honour all those killed in a 1985 attack on the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) headquarters, and not the men linked to the massacre.
The Labour leader – who was then an MP – stood alongside Maher al-Taher, the exiled leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), at the ceremony in 2014.
A month later, Taher’s group claimed responsibility for a terror attack in which four rabbis were slaughtered during their morning prayers, The Times reported.
Challenged by the BBC over why he was with Taher, he said: ‘I was unaware of any of his background.’
But writing in The Morning Star in 2014, Mr Corbyn told how he heard speeches made by members of PFLP at the Tunis conference.
He wrote: ‘The conference was welcomed by the President of Tunisia Dr Moncef Marzouki and heard opening speeches from Palestinian groups including Fatah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as well as solidarity from the Turkish parliament and international support.’
The 2014 memorial service happened during a conference in Tunis, where Hamas figures were present and condemned Israel.
Mr Corbyn is also facing an investigation into whether he failed to declare the trip to Tunisia, which was funded by the country’s government.
He insisted the costs were below £660 so he did not need to list the visit in the MPs’ register.

The Labour leader stood next to Maher al-Taher (ringed) – the exiled leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – at a ceremony in 2014