Jews don’t want to be on the front pages of newspapers. All we want is for Corbyn to treat us fairly Jeremy Corbyn is a longstanding Arsenal fan. This is an appropriate fit. It’s not just that the colour of his […]

Jeremy Corbyn is a longstanding Arsenal fan. This is an appropriate fit. It’s not just that the colour of his team’s kit neatly matches that of the Labour Party, or that the club’s stadium is based in his constituency.

It’s fitting, because just like Arsenal’s manager, Arsène Wenger, Mr Corbyn so regularly and unfathomably fails to see things which are blindingly obvious.

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Earlier this month Danny Welbeck dived to win a penalty for his team. Asked for his thoughts on the incident, the Arsenal manager said he hadn’t seen it. It’s the “Arsène Wenger Defence”.

Last year he even employed the Arsène Wenger Defence when Arsenal scored, claiming not to have seen his team’s goal after Alexis Sanchez appeared to bundle the ball in using his hand.

Fouls, yellow cards, red cards – Mr Wenger sees very little. Surely he needs a better optician.

The unseen mural

On Saturday Jeremy Corbyn deployed the Arsène Wenger Defence in response to an antisemitic mural painted on a wall in East London. The painting was impressive only in how many classic antisemitic tropes the artist had managed to cram in to one artwork.

After the local council decided to paint over it because it was so conspicuously racist, Mr Corbyn criticised its removal. When his remarks surfaced this week, Mr Corbyn was forced to apply the Arsène Wenger Defence: he hadn’t seen the offensive images.

‘Just last week a Labour candidate called the Holocaust a “hoax” and a Labour MP labelled antisemitism claims “ridiculous”’

Three weeks ago it transpired that Jeremy Corbyn was a member of an antisemitic Facebook group which promoted Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

The Arsène Wenger Defence came, this time, from Mr Corbyn’s spokesman: Jeremy hadn’t seen these posts.

No rational explanation

Tellingly, Arsène Wenger has admitted lying in order to defend his players. “At times I saw it,” he told a reporter in 2009, “and I said I didn’t to protect the player, because I could not find any rational explanation to defend him.”

Just like the Arsenal manager, Jeremy Corbyn sees what he wants to see to fit his world view.

The ridiculous mural is far from the worst thing the British Jewish community has had to deal with. Our schools look like prisons because the terror threat is so high. Our synagogues each have to pay thousands of pounds a year for private security.

But the response “I didn’t see it” is the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. The drip-drip feed of incidents has bored a hole in our collective soul that fills us with pain. Just last week a Labour candidate called the Holocaust a “hoax” and a Labour MP labelled antisemitism claims “ridiculous”.

A tragic rift

The British Jewish community has a long and proud tradition of contributing to the success of this country through art and science, literature and philanthropy, politics and volunteering.

We also have a long and proud association with the Labour Party and historically supported it in huge numbers.

Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to see antisemitism when it is in plain sight has almost severed the connection. This is a tragedy.

Jews don’t want to be on the front pages of the newspapers. All we want is for Mr Corbyn – and all politicians – to treat us fairly. Nothing more, nothing less.

The Book of Psalms teaches: “They have a mouth but do not speak; they have eyes but do not see.” Mr Corbyn, there is a simple solution to your antisemitism problem: open your eyes to the disease festering in your Party, and open your mouth to call it out for what it is: racism.

Richard Verber is the Senior Vice President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews