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December 10, 2019 5:50 pm
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Jewish Group That Backs Corbyn Mocked for Member Mosaic Featuring Duplicate Images

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avatar by Algemeiner Staff

Part of a mosaic published on Dec. 8, 2019 by Jewish Voice for Labour, with added markers emphasizing repetition. Photo: JVL.

A group that has defended the British Labour Party amid a years-long antisemitism scandal and heavy criticism from the British Jewish community was mocked online after releasing a mosaic of supporters that was filled with duplicate images.

Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) published the image — which was ostensibly compiled using 4,800 photos of supporters, and bears the likeness of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn — on Sunday. “This image of Jeremy Corbyn is constructed out of many photos of Jews supporting Labour,” the group wrote. “All those, apart from Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, are photos of Jews in Britain.”

Yet critics quickly pointed to the mosaic’s heavy repetition of many photos, which they described as misleading and evidence of the low support both JVL and Corbyn maintain in the British Jewish community. One photo of a woman in a red shirt appeared more than 200 times in the collection, according to a count by The Algemeiner.

This is insidious,” wrote antisemitism researcher and blogger David Collier. “THEY KNOW what they are doing is deceptive. THEY KNOW they have just used the same dozen images 100s of times. It is blatantly meant to deceive. This is what people are voting for on Thursday.”

“[W]hat kind of psychological mess creates art of politicians like this?” asked Lee Kern, a writer and comedian.

The image was nonetheless shared hundreds of times by Labour supporters on social media since its release.

JVL was founded in 2017 and has regularly dismissed claims of antisemitism in the Labour Party and against Corbyn as a smear campaign designed to suppress criticism of Israel and the progressive agenda. Their views have been largely rejected by Britain’s Jewish community and its leading representatives ahead of Thursday’s elections, with recent polling indicating that 84 percent of British Jews believe Corbyn to be a threat to the Jewish community.

Labour is currently being investigated over allegations of antisemitism by the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, which received a submission last month from the Jewish Labour Movement — an affiliate of the party that was founded in 1903 — containing more than 100 testimonies from Labour members detailing anti-Jewish discrimination.

Corbyn himself has been accused of tolerating antisemitism and maintaining long-running ties with anti-Zionist extremists. In one instance in 2012, Corbyn appeared on the Iranian propaganda network Press TV with Abdul Aziz Umar, a Hamas operative who was convicted in Israel for helping murder seven people in a 2003 suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Corbyn called Umar a “brother” during the segment, then appeared to blame fighting in the Sinai Peninsula between Egyptian officers and insurgents on Israel. “In whose interest is it … to kill Egyptians, other than Israel?” Corbyn asked. “I suspect the hand of Israel in this whole process of destabilization.”

A representative for JVL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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