British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn described Hamas, the terror group banned by the EU, as ‘’serious, hard-working and not corrupt;’’

He also said Hamas should not have to recognise the state of Israel before peace talks can begin, according to a newly-resurfaced 2010 radio interview.

The comments come just a day after it emerged that Mr Corbyn visited a wreath-laying ceremony at the grave of one of the terrorists behind the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre.

In the interview he criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not entering peace talks with Hamas and called for a suspension of the EU's trade agreement with Israel.

Hamas, which has carried out a wave of deadly bombings against Israelis, has said it will never recognise the State of Israel.

But in the interview, Corbyn said: 'When I asked about recognition of Israel, I wasn't expecting them to say we are prepared to recognise Israel. I don't think they could possibly do that and retain credibility amongst their own members.’’

He added, ‘’they went as far as using words like accepting the reality of the situation of Israel's existence. This apparently is not enough for Benjamin Netanyahu or for the United States, and so we continue on this, in my view, fairly disastrous policy of trying to divide the various Palestinian forces.'

Corbyn, who became the head of the Labour party in 2015, is a hard-left politician whom the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews said “most people in the Jewish community can’t trust” because of his praise for Hezbollah and Hamas and perceived failures in addressing anti-Semitic rhetoric by some of his supporters.

An article published in the Sunday Times quotes an October 2014 column Corbyn wrote for the Morning Star in which he recounted attending a ceremony in Tunisia “where wreaths were laid … on the graves of those killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991.”

This prompted speculation that Corbyn, whose party will contend in the general election on June 8 against the ruling Conservative Party, had honored the memory of Atef Bseiso, who was head of intelligence for the PLO and was involved in the murder of the Israeli athletes as part of the 1972 Black September terrorist operation in Munich. Bseiso was killed in Paris in 1992.

Following the pubication of the article, a spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn told Board of Deputies President Jonathan Arkush that “Jeremy Corbyn condemns the Munich massacre and its perpetrators, and that what he was attending was not anything to do with perpetrator Atef Bseiso, but an event to commemorate the 1985 bombing of the PLO headquarters.”

“Whilst of a different order, this would still be a matter of concern to us,” the board statement read, recalling that 1985 bombing by Israel “was a retaliation against the PLO-inspired murders of 15 Israeli civilians in Palestinian terror attacks the previous month.”

Corbyn, the board also said, “has too often in the past been in sympathetic encounters with terrorist individuals and organizations, with the by-product of lending legitimacy to their violence. This new revelation follows part of that disturbing pattern.”

EJP