If you are a Jewish Green party member, even one who proclaims to be anti-Zionist but attends a Zionist synagogue – which of course, almost all of them are – the Green party could target you. Green members genuinely, and I almost can’t believe I’m writing it about a now mainstream political party, voted down an amendment that would protect Jewish synagogue-going members as they passed the ‘Zionism is racism’ clause at their party conference. (I am a proud Zionist, make of that what you will, Greens.)
Zack Polanski, himself Jewish, should have known this targeting was coming and should not be so naive about what it means. This is only the latest development in the Greens’ slide into revolting depths; one that a quick glance back in history would warn them of. Earlier this year, Polanski was accused of two things that are sacrilegious to the Green party membership: not being a true anti-racist for failing to back ethnic minority Green members suspended over anti-Semitism and not being anti-Zionist enough. Complaints of Polanski that could really only ever have been made by fellow Greens.
Polanski has allowed the horror show to play out around him
The accusations come from a group formally backed by Polanski’s co-deputy leader, Mothin Ali, a devout Muslim who cried ‘Allahu Akbar’ and declared a ‘win for the people of Gaza’ after being elected as a Leeds councillor.
Polanski should have been prepared for this. He has previously claimed to be ‘really aware’ of Bundism: a socialist, Jewish, anti-Zionist movement popular in pre-war Poland which effectively ceased to exist as a strong political movement after 1945 – you can guess why. It was one that spoke of fighting for working-class solidarity and doikayt (the Yiddish word for ‘hereness’ that encouraged building communities where they lived rather than seeking an established Jewish state).
But the Bundists and their ideas were decimated in the most brutal way possible, because all the things they thought would help protect them from persecution, ‘solidarity across difference’, couldn’t keep them from the fact they were still Jewish – and that loose solidarity would not amount to anything. Bundists who weren’t killed by Hitler ended up being shot by Stalin. They were abandoned by their fellow workers on both the left and the right. A Jew was a Jew no matter their allegiances.
And just like it did for the Bundists, it is doing for Polanski. Despite claiming to be influenced by the Bund, it is obvious that the Green leader has not learnt any of its lessons. To the Green party, a Jew is a Jew no matter their class, LGBT status or eco-credentials.
Look at how Polanski backed the very co-deputy leader who seems to be turning on him after it was revealed that Ali, after the October 7th terror attack, posted on social media suggesting that Hamas fighters were ‘indigenous people defending themselves’ and that condemnation of the attack was ‘white supremacy’. The Green co-deputy leader has also claimed Israelis were ‘not victims, they’re occupiers, they’re colonialists’, and said their supporters were using ‘the weapon of anti-Semitism’ to stop criticism of the Israeli government.
Polanski allowed his deputy to get away with comments like that – and what has he been rewarded with? WhatsApp messages, revealed by The Spectator, show Ali’s disdain for his boss. Or look at the Heaton Park synagogue terror attack. Afterwards Polanski told the BBC:
I am from the Jewish community and I grew up attending a synagogue that is fairly close to this one. I feel this on a political level and a personal level. I’m also one of five Jewish people in British political history to be leader of a party in the last 100 years so I take anti-Semitism really seriously.
He added: ‘I also recognise in the same breath that Islamophobia is on the rise, LGBT hate crime is on the rise. All of these hate crimes are ultimately about minority communities.’
Polanski didn’t need to make that addition. It was done, like the Bundists, for solidarity. But it doesn’t really make a difference how much solidarity he tries to show. Green candidates, like the former candidate for Clapham Town who was arrested for allegedly sharing a post including a placard that read ‘ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-Semitism, it’s revenge’, will still emerge. Targeted action against Zionist Jews – which most are – may well be tolerated because now, according to the Greens, most Jews are racist.
And just like the Bundists, when the solidarity fails to present itself in reality, Polanski ignores the abandonment and downplays it – he skipped today’s vote at Green party conference and has allowed the horror show to play out around him. That will stay true until the horror show finally turns on him.
One of the key Bundist figures, upon hearing after the war that some were trying to revive the movement after such destructive failures, exclaimed there should be no more: ‘Comrades, enough splashing around in piss!’ Zack Polanski should also stop splashing.
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