Motion A105: The Green Party’s ‘Zionism is Racism’ debacle

In another world, Green Party members could have left their party’s conference promoting its climate-change and cost-of-living policies. It would have been the perfect opportunity for the party to reset and woo progressive voters who have returned to Labour amid the Burnham bounce.

Sadly, that is not the world we live in. 

Thanks to the efforts of extremist wreckers, the party’s energy and media attention have instead been devoted to ‘Zionism is Racism’: the title of a motion that is tactically ruinous and bereft of nuance.

One problem with the motion is that it tries to define a fiercely contested concept. A recent survey of American Jews by Dr Mira Sucharov found that support for the term Zionism ranged all the way from 10% to 72% depending on how it was defined. This lack of clarity surrounding what the term means was made especially clear by Green Party Cllr Yunus Smith, a supporter of the Zionism is Racism motion. In an interview with The News Agents, he seemed to argue that you could simultaneously oppose Zionism and support the State of Israel’s existence. That will be news to most self-described anti-Zionists.

More broadly, the motion posits that Zionism “seeks to maintain – and where possible – expand, an apartheid regime” between the river and the sea. Some self-described Zionist organisations, such as Yachad, vehemently oppose the occupation and have gone so far as to support the government’s ban on goods trade with the settlements. Going by the definition of Zionism that the motion puts forward, do they count as Zionist?

Any motion that obsesses over a term as contested as Zionism will inevitably result in inane, unending debates about what it actually means. Not only is this a waste of time, but it distracts from where the focus should be: fierce opposition to Israel’s policies, whether it be its apartheid policies in the West Bank or what an UN Commission describes as a genocide in Gaza.

Beyond detracting from the ongoing horrors in Israel-Palestine, the motion seeks to impose a political solution on the region that Palestinians don’t support. It advocates for a “single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine.” But according to recent polling, only 10% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip back this option. In contrast, a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders received 56% support. Thus, the motion is out of touch with the political realities on the ground in Palestine. Its implicit assumption that a group of political activists halfway around the world know better than actual Palestinians was rightly derided by both Zack Polanski and Green Deputy Leader Rachel Milward as ‘imperialist’ before the motion’s passage.

The motion itself is immensely flawed, but what worries me even more is the extremist and antisemitic track record of the group that sponsored it: ‘Greens For Palestine.’ 

During the local elections this year, multiple candidates for the Green Party were found to have made antisemitic comments. This includes one in Lambeth that lauded attacks on synagogues as legitimate acts of ‘revenge,’ and another in Walsall that referred to ‘Jewish cockroaches.’ Despite this unambiguous antisemitism, ‘Greens For Palestine’ condemned the suspension of antisemitic candidates by the party and described any antisemitism allegations as ‘smears’ on social media. 

The organisation also has links to the Anti-Zionist Movement (AZM), an activist group co-led by Dr David Miller and Rahmeh Aladwan. Both have track records of making antisemitic remarks, with the latter having openly called for Jews to be ethnically cleansed from Israel-Palestine.

Alongside that, the motion’s official proposer, Lubna Speitan, has called for self-described Zionists to be “hunted in the same way as the Nazi oppressors were,” even though 2/3 of British Jews identify as Zionist. Speitan also was described as a ‘close friend’ of an Al-Qaeda terrorist who pleaded guilty to plotting to bomb Heathrow Airport in court documents. 

Put all the pieces together, and the picture is alarming. The individuals behind this motion are politically extreme and at best actively tolerate antisemitism and, at worst, endorse it.

Evidence of this hostility towards Jews was clear at the Green Party Conference itself. Green Party members proposed an amendment to the motion that would have created explicit safeguards for Jewish members. This included guarantees that the motion would not be used to discipline or sanction Jewish members who were associated with “synagogues, community centres or denominational groups” that identified as Zionist. Not only did Speitan and co. oppose the amendment, but it was voted down overwhelmingly by members, leaving some Jewish members feeling ‘betrayed.’

Overall, the implications of the motion’s passage are clear. The Green Party has been captured by extremists who wish to obsess over a messy and contested term, ignore Palestinian opinion, and create a hostile environment for British Jews. Their actions have created divisions within the party and left it vulnerable to backlash from the press, limiting the party’s viability as an electoral force that could have challenged Labour from the left.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Evelyn Simak

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