In a remarkable act of self-sabotage, Green party members have today passed a motion declaring that ‘Zionism is racism’ by 1022 to 813 votes. This motion, grotesquely passed on Simchat Torah – the Jewish holiday on which Hamas carried out the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – makes the Greens the first party of electoral significance in the UK, and possibly in Europe, to adopt extremist, racist views as policy. This could end their ambition to enter mainstream British politics.
The motion goes well beyond criticising Israeli policy – it adopts a radical view that denies Jewish right to self-determination and reinvents Zionism as a ‘European settler-colonial’ project. It omits Jewish historical connection to the land, ignores Zionism’s origins as a response to persecution, and disregards the fact that about half of Israeli Jews are of Middle Eastern or North African descent.
The motion defines Zionism as an ideology of exclusion and domination, a definition that bears no resemblance to what Zionism means to the vast majority of Jews: the belief that Jews, like other peoples, have the right to national self-determination in their ancestral homeland. This attempt to redefine Zionism as inherently racist vilifies a legitimate political aspiration and acknowledges only the right of Palestinians to statehood.
The Green party has lost its direction and its moral compass
The motion is silent on other things, too. While it’s filled with admonition of Israel for violence and so-called apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing – all relying on falsehoods – it says nothing about Palestinian terrorism, virulent anti-Semitism, or the 7 October attack. Instead, it supports resistance ‘by all available means’ and quotes a UN resolution that includes ‘armed struggle’ without limits. There isn’t a single sentence opposing attacks on Israeli civilians – a silence that reads like permission rather than an oversight. It refers to Palestinian ‘combatants’, demanding that they be treated as prisoners of war, and calls for the release of Marwan Barghouti, convicted in Israel for terrorism offences, but referred to as a ‘prisoner of conscience’. This wording matters; it not only whitewashes terrorism but also carries the significant legal protections afforded by prisoner of war status.
Then there’s the rejection of a two-state solution and a call for the elimination of Israel. This goes beyond what any major political party, even those highly critical of Israel, has deemed acceptable policy. The motion attempts to sanitise this by imagining a democratic, peaceful Palestinian state, ignoring the impact of decades of incitement, terrorism and the influence of Islamist groups committed to Israel’s destruction and the killing of Jews. It then adds ‘the right of return for Palestinians and their descendants’, while proposing the absurd notion of a state in which Jews could somehow live safely as a minority. Ultimately, the motion advances the same objective as that of Islamists: annihilating the Jewish state. It offers no solution to where millions of Jews should go and how they’ll be safe.
But what grounds are there for assuming that Jews would be safe as a minority? Israel is a democracy, and although it is defined as a Jewish state in its secular meaning – a home for Jews – its Muslim, Druze, Christian citizens, as well as those of all other religions, enjoy equal rights and freedoms. The Palestinian territories present a very different picture: Islam is the official religion and Sharia law a major source of legislation; Hamas governs Gaza as an Islamist movement. Women, gays, and religious minorities face discrimination and harassment. A recent American State Department report notes that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas engage in unlawful killings, torture and inhumane treatment of civilians and place severe restrictions on basic freedoms. Of course the Green party’s motion doesn’t mention this.
Some in the party know this has gone too far, but their reservations have arrived too little and too late, and all motions designed to safeguard Jewish members and to avoid rejection of a two-state solution were voted down earlier today. Polanski showed poor leadership by skipping the vote while the MPs Ellie Chowns, Sian Berry and Carla Denyer publicly opposed it. Meanwhile, the former party leaders Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay labelled it ‘divisive and not helpful’.
This, however, downplays just how dangerous the motion is: silence on terrorism, one-sided claims, demonisation, historical revisionism, support for the destruction of a country, and anti-Semitism – or the motion would be considered anti-Semitic, except it rejects all recognised definitions of anti-Semitism, leaving the party without one. Conveniently, that which is not defined cannot be formally recognised. The Greens’ former deputy leader, Shahar Ali, hit the nail on the head by referring to it as ‘wicked’.
The binding motion is also likely to be met with legal challenges if found to cause discrimination and harassment against Jewish members and possibly against Jewish institutions in local authorities led by the Greens. This could constitute a potential violation of Section 101 of the Equality Act 2010.
By adopting this motion today, the Greens have placed themselves in a position so extreme that their inclusion in a future coalition government under a Labour leadership becomes politically toxic and practically impossible. Were an election to be held soon, a recent YouGov poll predicted that Labour would be the largest party with 241 seats – but they would fall short of a majority, making a coalition government a likely outcome. Labour could team up with the Liberal Democrats, expected to win 71 seats, but would still be short of the required 326 seats. Even if the Greens win more than their projected nine seats, Labour would find it difficult to justify forming a coalition with them.
Zack Polanski’s Green party has been taken over by radical activists. The atmosphere is so saturated with hatred of Jews that conference organisers had to arrange a safe room for Jewish members attending it. The party has lost its direction and its moral compass and has ended up scoring a huge own goal.
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