Letter: Googling Jeremy Corbyn

I decided to do as Terry Palmer (Let’s Talk, Saturday, December 21), suggested and Google what he sees as an indisputable truth that Jeremy Corbyn is a terrorist sympathiser.

Not only because of Terry Palmer’s oh so certain conviction on this but because I find certain anomalies that are enough to make me doubt his assertion.

It seems strange to me that given this accusation particularly by the Conservative Party and their supportive media that Corbyn has won two eminent peace prizes, one being the Seán MacBride Peace Prize for “sustained and powerful political work for disarmament and peace” and the other the Gandhi International Peace Award in 2013. Not well publicised because they don’t help support the terrorist sympathiser image.

He has been chair of the “Stop The War” campaign (2011-15), and was a vocal opponent of the Iraq War as well as marching against apartheid. If you read his parliamentary record, as I suggest Mr Palmer does, it suggests a man with an abhorrence of war and violence.

This is not to deny the plentiful factual evidence of meetings with Sinn Fein and Hamas that are well documented and there is no doubt that Corbyn had the same goal of unification as Sinn Fein and a lot of criticism of Israel’s actions towards Palestine but does that make him indisputably a terrorist sympathiser?

Nor does it automatically mean he endorses their actions. As he said: “To broker peace you have to talk to both sides but it doesn’t make you a terrorist.”

Almost all conflicts are solved through talking and negotiation and as Sinn Fein wasn’t allowed here he went to them.

It does not take a lot of imagination to see how a role of negotiator can be tweaked, particularly if said enough to convince that the role is something far more sinister.

One of the other difficulties about total acceptance of Corbyn as a terrorist is the fact that the label of terrorist seems arbitrary and self-serving for political gain.

Thatcher, Major, Douglas Hurd, Willie Whitelaw had many meetings with IRA leaders and an IRA member (Maria Gatland), was accepted as a Tory Party councillor. David Cameron called Jeremy Corbyn a terrorist for not supporting the bombing of Syria, an action which a great many people did not agree with.

He was reviled for referring to a group including Hamas as friends but there was no such approbation when the Saudi royal family were referred to in the same way and there are many more such examples.

I find the hypocrisy of this appalling and the ease with which people accept facts without examining motives and underlying principles as well as why some people’s actions are consistently targeted as suspect whilst others escape censor.

So yes, Mr Palmer, I would suggest we do need more proof.

Yes, you are right about the facts but the interpretation of those facts seems to be something you have not considered or the fact that other people’s agendas can be at work in the presenting of them.