Haifa, a mountainous Israeli city on the coast of the Mediterranean, is a place that makes you believe in coexistence. It is home to Jews, Muslims, Christians, and to some of the region’s most persecuted minorities, such as the Druze, Baha’is and Ahmadis.
If you ever find yourself there, you will most likely visit the lush terraces on Mount Carmel. The terraces and the shrine at their summit are among the main sites of the Baha’i faith, a young monotheistic religion that emerged in Iran in the 19th century. The Baha’i are pacifist and preach for the essential worth of all religions. In Iran, despite them being the country’s largest non-Muslim religious minority, they have long faced persecution.
In Haifa, after visiting the gardens you can wander down the mountain to eat in a smart Christian-Arab restaurant, stop by a Muslim-run café for knafeh and black coffee, or end up in a bar blasting Hebrew music. There are no ‘diversity is our strength’ signs needed here – people simply live together.
So you can imagine my surprise when, of all places, at the Hackney Greens’ manifesto launch, a local pro-Palestine activist gave a passionate speech about the ‘apartheid’ in Haifa. Describing it as ‘Israel’s military port city’, she promised that under Green rule, Hackney would finally cut its twin-city ties with this evil Zionist stronghold. I couldn’t hold back my laughter.
I looked around at the devoted Green voters who would later go out door-knocking. They seemed like normal people, but their enthusiastic applause for claims that could be debunked with two minutes of basic research was telling. The only flags on display were Palestinian flags, and half the stalls seemed to be devoted to Palestine. The references of Palestine were so frequent that one might have thought the Greens were running in Ramallah. ‘Hackney Votes Palestine 2026’, the leaflets promised.
The local Green’s candidate for mayor, Zoe Garbett, seemed delighted by the activist’s speech, whom I later discovered was a local Gen Z actress. Judging by her Instagram account, she had only begun posting about politics about a year ago, apparently prompted by Palestine activism. When Garbett introduced both the activist and the Hackney Votes Palestine organisation, she said they had been working together ‘closely’.
I was annoyed enough to follow Garbett as she was leaving, and challenged her about her fixation with Haifa. As you can imagine, Garbett has never been there. She nodded blankly when I mentioned the Baha’i’s plight in the Middle East, then tried to redirect me to her actress-activist friend.
I kept pressing, highlighting Haifa’s unique co-existence and how cutting civic partnership would only punish its residents. ‘I’ve been on my own journey with this. I am a big fan of twining, but I don’t think we can commit to this at this time when Israel is doing what it’s doing,’ she said. ‘The information that I’ve received from Hackney Votes for Palestine, and Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign were showing the conditions of people living there.’ When I asked about these conditions, pointing out that people have a pretty great life there, she suggested I send her further information. I suggested she use Google.
Garbett wasn’t impressed that Haifa is a hub for communist and left-wing parties. ‘In Hackney thousands of people signed a petition to break the twining relationship, and we have to respond to the needs of the Hackney residents too,’ Garbett continued. Apparently, the ‘needs’ of residents to hate Israel supersedes any reality on the ground. She added that she spoke ‘with lots of people… Jewish, Muslim’.
One Jew Garbett clearly did not agree with is Martin Sugarman, the chair of Hackney Anglo Israel Friendship Association (HAIFA). ‘Garbett doesn’t know anything. The Greens are viciously anti-Israel and totally ignorant,’ he told me in a call.
Sugarman explained that the cities were initially twined in 1968 because of their uniquely diverse populations. In practice, the Hackney Council doesn’t invest money in the partnership and mainly provides a political stamp of approval. Since 1990, the main cooperation has been between Rambam Hospital in Haifa and Homerton Hospital in Hackney, including exchanges of medical delegations. ‘It has been very fruitful. I remember one of the delegations speaking to the council about the experience they had gained in treating gun and knife trauma in Israel,’ he said.
Even though Covid and war have paused these ties, the Hackney Greens, the Independent Socialists and the pro-Palestine crowd still feel like they have found a useful target. The demand for de-twinning, along with divestment of pension funds from Israel, has been accompanied by intense protests, encampments outside the town hall and foul-mouthed exchanges at the council. In late 2024, the Hackney Council rejected a motion to de-twin, arguing that it would not contribute to peace or dialogue, and in October 2025, the council adopted a policy suspending all formal civic activities with twin cities in active conflict zones, including Haifa. Sugarman hopes to revive the connections once the wars are over.
Meanwhile, the tensions on the streets have intensified. In 2023 alone there were 220 recorded anti-Semitic incidents in Hackney, 41 of which were physical attacks, according to the Community Security Trust. ‘I really think that the Jewish communities are under siege, and people like Garbett incite violence against Jewish people even if they do not mean so,’ said Sugarman, pointing to the connection between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He felt it firsthand. In July 2024, while scraping posters off a bus stop that called for de-twining, a man from the Palestine Solidarity encampment outside Hackney Town Hall shouted at him and then punched him in the face. Instinctively, Sugarman punched back. Sugarman said the case later resulted in a conviction for the attacker, who was sentenced to community service.
‘They tried to claim that I attacked him first, but the whole incident was filmed on a camara,’ he explained. After the attack, Heather Mendick, a member of the Hackney Independent Socialist Collective (which has cooperated with the Hackney Green party) standing in the Homerton ward, posted a thread on X railing against ‘Zionists who manufacture a vast amount of outrage over “antisemitism”’, while exposing Sugarman’s identity. Mendick is a former liaison officer to the Jewish community for Jeremy Corbyn, who was expelled from Labour in 2022 due to alleged behaviour involving ‘antisemitic actions, stereotypes and sentiments’.
As Garbett’s hollow campaign against an imagined Haifa wins her voters and a sense of relevance, her party seems far less interested in the fraying coexistence in Hackney itself.
Comments