FEW attacks on Jeremy Corbyn have sunk so low as the slur that he associates with anti-semites, repeated in the pages of the Guardian and Jewish Chronicle as well as in a travesty of a “news” report by Channel 4’s Cathy Newman.

The Islington North MP’s record of opposing racism in all its forms shames those of most British politicians.

Corbyn was arrested for protesting against apartheid South Africa five years before David Cameron’s dodgy trade trip to the racist regime and in a decade when the young Tory toffs were wearing Hang Nelson Mandela badges.

He has consistently taken a stand against anti-semitism, Islamophobia and the persecution of Roma and Travellers, not least in numerous columns for this newspaper over the years.

That makes yesterday’s open letter from dozens of well-known Jewish people to the Chronicle a welcome move.

Their assertion that the Chronicle does not speak on behalf of “progressive Jews in this country” marks an important and vital distinction between Jewish people and the state of Israel.

It is true that there are vile anti-semites who have tried to use the oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people as some sort of justification for their sick views.

It is also true that “anti-semitism” has become a knee-jerk reaction from right-wing bigots desperate to prevent recognition that modern Israel is a systematically racist and routinely murderous colonial power.

Corbyn suggests that Britain should stop selling arms to a country whose military is under investigation for war crimes, and he is accused of extremism.

At the same time a declaration from Liz Kendall that she opposed Parliament’s vote recognising a Palestinian state was somehow deemed reasonable.

Corbyn’s principled and entirely correct position that to end conflict you need to talk to your enemies would seem justified by the results of the peace process in Northern Ireland.

It is even reflected in the pragmatic moves by the United States to normalise relations with some of its least favourite governments, whether the progressive socialist state of Cuba or the reactionary theocracy in Iran.

But no, according to luminaries such as Gordon Brown, you can’t build alliances if you’re prepared to talk to anyone.

What criteria Brown was using when he listed his four unacceptable interlocutors is unclear — Hezbollah and Hamas as Islamist resistance organisations might have certain ideological affinities, but the only thing linking them to Venezuela’s democratic Bolivarian revolution, or the latter to the gangster capitalism of Putin’s Russia, is that all four are disapproved of by Washington.

Somehow the United States itself is seldom called out for extremism or violations of human rights — although this is a country where police shoot dead a thousand people every year and which imprisons more of its people than any other state on Earth.

Perhaps those abusing Corbyn could continue their “McCarthyite guilt by association” routine by shaming politicians who have sucked up to the US.

There is more than a whiff of racism about a nation where a white man can shoot an unarmed black teenager dead, be unanimously acquitted of any wrongdoing by a jury and go on to raise money for a gun shop — which explicitly discriminates against Muslims — by selling paintings of the flag of the racist and pro-slavery Confederacy.

The fact that there is a market for the daubings of George Zimmerman in the first place is a chilling revelation that by executing an innocent young man in cold blood the Neighbourhood Watch killer has gained some sort of hero status.

Racism is real, endemic and lethal. If only those desperately trying to smear Jeremy Corbyn had the decency to campaign with him against it.