The Green Party of England and Wales has had an eventful few weeks. On October 4, the party adopted a motion declaring that Zionism, Israel‘s foundational ideology, is racism. The motion defines Zionism as a political ideology that called for the creation, and now the continuation, of an ethnonationalist Jewish state in historic Palestine that excludes or dominates the non-Jewish population. It says Zionism has, in practice, meant the dehumanisation, displacement, dispossession, disenfranchisement and destruction of Palestinians, rooted in European settler colonialism. The motion draws a clear distinction between Zionism as a political ideology and Jewish ethnicity, culture and religion, noting that not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. It also calls for a single democratic Palestinian state across historic Palestine, with equal rights for all and a right of return for Palestinians.
The motion signals a historic and positive shift in the Green Party’s stance towards Israel after three years of genocide in Gaza and escalating settler violence in the West Bank. DiEM25 has likewise described Israel as an apartheid state engaged in settler colonialism, and its members voted in 2021 to support a single, democratic, secular state in historic Palestine for Jews and Palestinians, on the grounds that Israel’s actions on the ground have made any viable two-state solution incompatible with equality.
While the Greens should celebrate the motion’s passage, what it means for the party more broadly remains unclear. Members backed it by 1,022 votes to 813, but four of the party’s five MPs opposed it. Conference also rejected, by 1,026 votes to 684, an amendment backed by party leader Zack Polanski to protect Jewish members belonging to synagogues that describe themselves as Zionist. Polanski, who had voiced concerns about the motion’s wording, missed the vote while campaigning in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Four days later, he lost the contest to Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali by 3,364 votes. Following the result, former party leader Caroline Lucas accused Polanski of failing to show leadership over the motion.
In March, the motion ran out of time before it could be put to a vote, following a series of no-confidence motions against the conference chair, which supporters called sabotage, amid reports that senior figures feared a row over antisemitism ahead of May’s local elections. In October, there was no such reprieve. Polanski says he tried to have the conference moved, but the vote went ahead four days before polling day, handing a hostile press a story for the final week of the campaign: Israel banned him from entering the country, while Jewish communal bodies condemned the party and its leadership. Whether anyone within the party saw an advantage in that timing is impossible to know, but for those uneasy with Polanski’s eco-populist turn, the outcome can hardly have been unwelcome.
The motion has come under renewed scrutiny since his defeat. In an op-ed published in The Guardian on 11 October, Polanski addressed both the loss and the motion. Writing as a Jewish man who grew up in a Zionist household, he described Palestinians living under an apartheid system that denies them fundamental rights and said the motion’s substance chimed with his understanding of Zionism as “the ideology that underpins the displacement and genocide of Palestinians.” Polanski also noted that Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos shares his views and supported the motion.
Where Polanski differed from his members was over what a party should do with that view. It is not the job of a political party, he wrote, “to tell people what to believe – and a narrow focus on definitions is neither desirable nor strategic.” He rejected the motion’s attempt to dictate the future shape of a state in Israel and Palestine, arguing that this is not for the British government, let alone the Green Party, to decide. He said he had made clear which amendments he wanted adopted before the vote and was disappointed they had failed. He also gave an assurance that no one in the party would be made to feel unwelcome because of their background, faith or place of worship. On his absence, he was blunt: Labour had chosen a polling date close to the conference, and his priority was the by-election.
The mainstream UK press has been keen to link Polanski’s loss to the motion. It is worth remembering, however, that the Greens’ rise has come partly because of their pro-Palestine stance, not in spite of it. Membership has more than tripled under Polanski, from around 68,000 to around 240,000, and the Greens have made significant electoral breakthroughs. They won their first parliamentary by-election in Gorton and Denton in February, then surged in London in May, winning 279 council seats and electing their first directly elected mayors, in Hackney and Lewisham. Polanski argues that these results helped topple Keir Starmer, replacing him with a prime minister to his left, and forced a change in the government’s tone towards Israel.
The real test is what happens next. In the same op-ed, Polanski called for party democracy to evolve in line with the Greens’ growth, including giving leaders more responsibility for setting the party’s strategic direction. Coming just days after members passed a motion he did not support, with four of his five MPs also opposed, that proposal will inevitably be viewed in the context of the vote. If it becomes a means of reining in a membership whose energy has driven the party’s rise, the divisions will deepen. If the leadership instead engages with the membership and demonstrates that opposing Zionism and protecting Jewish members are part of the same anti-racist commitment, the party may emerge with a clearer identity than any of its rivals.
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