AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A Dutch anti-discrimination activist said he was assaulted while protesting a visit to the Netherlands by the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
The chairman of the CiJo group said he received several blows to his neck after he and two activists from the group unfurled a banner reading “Labour: For the many, not the Jew” at a meeting in The Hague hosted Thursday by the Dutch Labor party for Corbyn. Hidde van Koningsveld also said his glasses were damaged and that he intended to press charges.
The protest was over claims of anti-Semitic behavior by Corbyn, who in 2009 called Hezbollah and Hamas his “friends” and in 2013 defended an anti-Semitic mural, and within his party.
Lodewijk Asscher, the leader of the Dutch Labor party, condemned the violence, as he called it.
“Terrible that this happened, no one is justified to use violence in my name, ever,” Asscher wrote on Twitter.
But a spokesperson for Dutch Labor, who was not named, told the De Telgraaf daily that whereas there “may have been some pushing, violence is a strong word for it.”
The Center for Information on Documentation on Israel, which is affiliated with CiJo, asked Labor to clarify its position on the incident.
Van Koningsveld and two other members of CiJo were asked to leave the venue after Corbyn finished speaking.
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