To put antisemitism claims behind him, Jeremy Corbyn needs to state clearly his position on Israel

When a news story descends into an argument about how near a politician might have been to a given grave in Tunisia on a visit four years ago, and with only some limited photographic evidence to go on, it is safe to say that, whatever its merits, that particular line of enquiry has run out of journalistic stream.

The intervention of the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, into the latest Jeremy Corbyn controversy does add some currency to the story, for obvious reasons, but it doesn’t much alter the basic facts, such as we know and dispute them.

The bigger picture, though, to be fair to all concerned, requires no such resolution of the minutiae of who laid what wreath where, and how far away the future leader of the opposition was from the earthly relics of the butchers of the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Mr Corbyn was in a place intended as a memorial to Palestinian freedom fighters, innocent civilians or terrorists or, perhaps in reality, all three categories. It is undeniable that Mr Corbyn, before he was famous, was in Tunisia at a ceremony at the Palestinian martyrs’ cemetery. His visit, as a backbencher, was part of the proceedings of the International Conference on Monitoring the Palestinian Political and Legal Situation in the Light of Israeli Aggression. Without wishing to sound flippant, there is a clue there in the very title of the conference about the general tenor of the event. Mr Netanyahu was unlikely to show up as an after-dinner speaker.

The main accusation, therefore, is the same as has been made many times in recent years: that Mr Corbyn has been far too chummy with various bodies representing the Palestinian people, from the Palestine Liberation Organisation to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Grainy photographs and half-remembered accounts of his attendances at obscure events are dredged up as “revelations”. They may be grievous errors of judgement or brave attempts at reconciliation in one of the great schisms of modern times. They are not, however, remotely revelatory or surprising.

Mr Corbyn has been “on the side of” peace and the struggle of the Palestinian people for as long as he has enjoyed political consciousness, which dates back to the era of Ted Heath and Harold Wilson or, appositely, Golda Meir and Yasser Arafat. Like most things, from nationalisation to Europe to the best way to prepare raspberry jam, his views have not changed much in the intervening decades of radical change. That’s why Corbynistas love him. No one is asking him to change his mind, but more to tell us what his views actually are. And what they might mean for a Corbyn government’s foreign policy. That’s why it matters.

The point about Mr Corbyn's attendance at this obscure conference and its ceremonials is not that he was some bloodthirsty fanatic glorying in the deaths of Israeli athletes, because he was no such thing; rather that he was probably a well-intentioned preacher of peace, and prepared to go along with what he thought was a ceremony to honour the dead in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and took too little interest in the names on the plaques.

Perhaps that was for reasons of courtesy to his hosts, or because he just didn’t think. Either way, that may account for his now hazy recollection of events and slight air of embarrassment.

The real question – one that underpins virtually all of the controversies in recent weeks about antisemitism – is this: what is Mr Corbyn’s policy towards Israel? This is what he needs to make a speech about, not so much the routine form of words about antisemitism he mouths. He badly needs to clear this up.

Does Mr Corbyn’s sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people – who have, there is no doubt, suffered aggression from Israeli governments – make him an anti-Zionist, or an antisemite? Does he believe in the two-state solution, as all of his predecessors did? Does he acknowledge Israel’s right to exist? Does he believe Israel is or is not a “racist endeavour”?

His supporters scoff at the idea that this distinguished and principled campaigner against war, against racism and for human rights could be any kind of antisemite. And yet Mr Corbyn, so tellingly, is more than willing to sign up for most of the definition of antisemitism as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – but not the example about Israel being a racist endeavour. Why so?

What will the resolution be? What will make the story “go away”, as they say?

The only answer is for Mr Corbyn, in the nicest way, to explain himself. He may as well. He seeks to be prime minister, after all. The citizens of the nation he seeks to govern – and not just the Jewish ones – have a right to know what he seeks to achieve, if anything, in the Middle East, and what that tells us about his outlook.

Mr Corbyn should share his personal view on the origins of the foundation of the state in 1948 and, indeed, the effects of the wars of 1967 and 1973. He needs to condemn the murders of the Israeli athletes in 1972, a crime against humanity that still carries the ability to shock 46 years on. There is no need for him to feel any compunction to mention the deaths of innocent Palestinians in the same breath; we can take it as read he is against those. He needs to tell the British, as a former colonial power, what precisely his intentions towards Israel would be as prime minister.

Those are reasonable questions, ones that he would be expected to address, were to become prime minister and hold a press conference in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or Gaza City. Unlike asking him to recall his precise disposition in a cemetery in Tunisia in 2014, they are queries he is in a position to answer, and has a duty to do so, and can do so as “prime minister in waiting”.

Why not a statesmanlike wide-ranging keynote speech on foreign and security policy from Mr Corbyn? He can cover Brexit, Nato, the nuclear deterrent, Russia, Trump and the Middle East. He might, then, have some answers of substance and of future importance to Benjamin Netanyhu, and his many other critics. No one would think Jeremy Corbyn was sincerely a “friend of Israel”, but declaring himself to be not an enemy would be nice.