Green Party Conference in Great Britain: How anti-Semitic are the English Greens?

It has been 90 years since the Jewish population of London's East End, supported by communists and Irish people living in London, stood in the way of Oswald Mosley's fascist “Black Shirts” on London's Cable Street. This was remembered on Sunday. Descendants of some of the Jewish activists from 1936 sang “Am Israel Chai” – the Jewish people are alive.

The organizers reacted hostilely to the Jewish march, said BBC producer Eve Kay. Apparently some called for mobilization against the presence of “the Zionists”. When the Jewish journalist Nicole Lampert tried to film some participants chanting slogans against Zionists with Kufija, they mocked her Star of David, bumped into her and told her that Zionists like her were today's fascists.

Since Sunday, a similar equation has been official policy of Britain's main left-wing opposition force. At its party conference in Brighton, the Green Party of England and Wales - the Scottish Greens are independent - decided by 1022 votes to 813 that Zionism was racism.

They also reaffirmed the Palestinians' right to armed resistance and boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) measures against Israel, whose right to exist is practically revoked: In the former mandated territory of Palestine, there should be only one state for all, with Jerusalem as the capital and the full right of return for all displaced and refugee Palestinians.

This decision came against the express wishes of the entire Green parliamentary group, which has five MPs, as well as the former party leader Caroline Lucas. Brighton MP Siân Berry, for example, said in a video message the day before the vote that Israelis and Palestinians should not be told what peace should look like.

The decision, Berry said, would unnecessarily divide the party, which has already taken a clear stance against “genocide” and arms sales to Israel, and could discriminate against Jewish members. Jewish Greens with memberships of synagogues or Jewish associations who, like the majority of British Jewish society, support Israel and Zionism can now be accused of racism.

Amendments that would have addressed these concerns were rejected at the party conference. For example, one that underlined the two-state solution and another that said Jewish party members needed to be protected from discrimination and bullying.

The Green Party leader Zack Polanski, himself Jewish, was not there at all for the discussion and vote on Sunday afternoon. He was reportedly in London, where he wants to win the constituency of the resigned Keir Starmer in a parliamentary by-election on Thursday. A week ago, at a campaign rally, he told members of the Jewish community that he sees himself as an anti-Zionist and sees the current Zionism practiced in Israel as racist.

His deputy Mothin Ali supported the motion at the party conference. He has a family background in Bangladesh and had to apologize in the past for, among other things, welcoming the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

Almost all Jewish organizations and synagogue associations heavily criticized the decision. The Greens had now openly made an anti-Semitic statement and, of all the people on earth, they would only deny Jews the right to self-determination, according to the tenor.

The initiator of the application was the Palestinian-British artist Lubna Speitan. She openly admits, and repeated it in an interview with the taz, that she joined the party because party members told her that there was a chance with the Greens to declare Zionism to be racism. She has now achieved this goal.

The damage to the Greens cannot yet be predicted. Adam Wagner, lawyer and advisor to the British Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), believes that the decision is most likely illegal. He points to the EHRC investigation into the Labor Party in 2020, when Jeremy Corbyn's previous leadership was found to have exhibited institutional anti-Semitism.

“The EHRC’s audit of the Labor Party makes it clear that the Greens cannot discriminate against members with legally protected characteristics such as ancestry, religion and belief,” says Wagner.

It remains to be seen whether there will be a lawsuit before the EHRC against the Greens, as there was against Labor, and how the party conference's decision will affect the party within the party. Some predict the end of Polanski's party leadership. He is considered the main aggregator of the party's anti-Zionist stance under the slogan "Israel is committing genocide, voting green". In the local elections in May, numerous Green candidates were found to have anti-Semitic and violent attitudes.

At the time, Polanski openly admitted his intention to work with the same means as Reform UK, i.e. populist but “left-wing”. Some are now questioning his party leadership. It doesn't help that he seems to have given false information about his family history.

Zack Polanski, whose real name is David Paulden, has often said that his direct ancestors fled the Holocaust. In truth, all of his grandparents had already emigrated to England or were already living there before Hitler came to power.