Jeremy Corbyn praised an activist who smeared graffiti on the walls of the Warsaw ghetto and called for Israeli MPs to be assassinated, calling her a ‘very good friend’, a MailOnline exclusive can reveal.
Ewa Jasiewicz, 40, is due to speak at a Momentum festival this month on the fringes of the Labour conference. Mr Corbyn and John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, will also speak at the event.
In 2010, Ms Jasiewicz desecrated the last remaining walls of the Warsaw ghetto – where an estimated 92,000 Jews died – with pro-Palestinian graffiti.
She explained her actions by claiming that Israel had ‘co-opted’ the Holocaust to serve ‘agendas of colonisation and repression.’
Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn (right) praised Ewa Jasiewicz (left) and referred to her as a ‘very good friend’
In 2002, she called for terrorists to target Israeli politicians, after the son of a family she was staying with on the West Bank ‘opened fire on some Israeli civilians in a market somewhere a few months ago.’
Mr Corbyn’s support for the activist, who has been accused of anti-Semitism, came at a rally in support of Gaza in 2009, after she made her comments about Israeli MPs but before she spray-painted the ghetto.
The Labour leader said: ‘I was brought to tears by a description sent to me by my good friend Ewa Jasiewicz, who is in Gaza at the present time on behalf of the Free Gaza movement.’
He went on to describe how Ms Jasiewicz wrote an account of seeing casualties of war in Gaza.
Mr Corbyn (pictured at the 2009 event) described how Ms Jasiewicz wrote an account of seeing casualties of war in Gaza
He added: ‘We send our regard, our respect and our affection to Ewa and all those who are there in solidarity with the Palestinian people.’
The Free Gaza organisation was founded by Greta Berlin, who has been accused of anti-Semitism after sharing Nazi propaganda films and other offensive material.
In 2011, Ms Jasiewicz gave a speech at a Women In Gaza event, where she praised Hamas as ‘dedicated to resistance’ and derided the more moderate Palestinian Authority as ‘collaborationalist’.
A year earlier, the radical activist wrote ‘free Gaza and Palestine’ on the Warsaw ghetto walls, while fellow protester Yonatan Shapira wrote ‘liberate all ghettos’ in Hebrew.
Ewa Jasiewicz is due to speak at a Momentum festival this month on the fringes of the Labour conference. Mr Corbyn and John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor (pictured), will also speak at the event
At the time, they said they were ‘civilians with little else in our hands aside from solidarity and a spray can’, and described their actions as a ‘small act of unarmed resistance’.
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum and archive in Jerusalem, said the graffiti was ‘tainted with anti-Semitism’, while the Community Security Trust, a British Jewish charity, described it as a ‘new low in cemetery desecration’.
Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said: ‘Ewa Jasiewicz’s views have been crystal clear for years. Decent people should have nothing but contempt for her actions, but Jeremy Corbyn chose to shower her with praise because he is anything but decent.
‘This is yet another example of how Mr Corbyn spent his decades in politics before becoming Labour leader very publicly demonstrating his contempt for Jews.’
Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said Corbyn (pictured) chose to shower Ewa Jasiewicz with praise because he is anything but decent
A Labour spokesman said: ‘Jeremy has a long record of campaigning for the rights of Palestinians and a just and peaceful settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict.’
In further revelations yesterday, the Times reported that Ms Jasiewicz called for ‘activists’ to ‘do’ the Israeli parliament or ‘a sophisticated politician bump-off’ rather than target Israeli civilians.
The remarks came in a 2,700-word email written during the second intifada when she was living in Jenin, on the West Bank, and published on a pro-Palestinian website.
She wrote: ‘I don’t see why activists can’t go and do the Knesset [Israeli parliament] or something, or do a sophisticated politician bump-off like the (Marxist-Leninist Palestinian terror group) PFLP?’
In a statement, Ms Jasiewicz claimed to have been traumatised when she wrote the email and said she did not advocate violence. She added, however, that resisting ‘military occupation’ was justified.
‘It’s important to take into account the role of trauma in impacting my thinking at the time,’ she wrote. ‘An occupied people – the Palestinian people in this case – have a right to resist military occupation.’
She emphasised: ‘I do not and never have advocated the harming of anybody and this was definitely not the intention of the comment in the email.
‘I apologise for any harm or upset this has caused and I ask people to understand it in the context that it was written, both as a flippant comment in a private email and under conditions of a violent occupation.’