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Corbyn invites Jewish groups to 'round table'

Jeremy Corbyn to host second meeting with Jewish groups - one day after meeting the Board and the JLC

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Jeremy Corbyn is to host a "round table" meeting with Jewish organisations - believed to include the anti-Israel Jewish Voice For Labour group - just one day after he meets with leaders of the Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council in a bid to resolve the on-going antisemitism crisis.

An email leaked to the JC and sent by Mr Corbyn's office and new General Secretary Jennie Formby confirms that the meeting - titled Respect and Engagement: Labour and the Jewish Community - is to go ahead at the party's London headquarters next week.

Invites are believed to have been sent out to the Jewish Labour Movement, the JLC, the Board of Deputies, the CST and the All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism.

But further emails are also said to have been forwarded from the Labour leadership to the JLV group, formed last year and chaired by Jenny Mamson and a long-standing member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians.

Next Wednesday's meeting is scheduled to be a "roundtable discussion on the relationship between the Labour Party and the Jewish community."

It will be chaired by Mr Corbyn - with Ms Formby also in attendance.

But the decision to include a group such as JVL in the discussion is likely to infuriate the Board, the JLC and the JLM.

One source told the JC:"It's Jeremy wanting to look as though he has reached out to everyone he possibly can on this matter.

"And not realising the consequence of his actions."

Mr Corbyn will meet leaders of the Board and the JLC on April 24.

Jonathan Arkush, Board president, and Jonathan Goldstein, JLC chairman have confirmed they will meet Mr Corbyn on Tuesday. 

Referring to the "Enough is Enough" demonstration organised by their groups in Parliament Square last month, Mr Arkush and Mr Goldstein wrote in the Observer on Sunday: "Last month’s protest was a necessary moment of catharsis, as painful for Labour as it was for our community, but we cannot now return to 'business as usual'. 

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