The Green Party of England and Wales has voted to declare Zionism “fundamentally incompatible with anti-racist principles, equality and justice”, a move that columnist Rafael Behr says leaves leader Zack Polanski looking like a passenger in the movement that carried him to the top.
The motion, passed at the party's conference, describes Zionism as based on “European settler-colonial systems of domination and oppression”. It includes a pre-emptive clause stating that the policy targets Zionism “as defined” in the motion, not the “religious or ethnic background of those who may identify as Zionists”.
Leadership vacuum at Brighton
Behr argues that Polanski, who is Jewish, had the chance to show real leadership but blew it. Polanski left Brighton to campaign ahead of the byelection in Holborn and St Pancras, the north London seat vacated by Keir Starmer, rather than staying to debate and vote on the motion.
Polanski had endorsed a “safeguarding” amendment to reassure Jewish Greens that attendance at synagogues, most of which hold to some idea of Zionism, would not lead to sanction by the party. The amendment was rejected.
Party rulebook limits leader's influence
Behr notes that Polanski's influence over the process was limited by the Green party's rulebook, which gives the membership control over policy. It is unclear whether he could have swayed opinion by deploying the charisma that won him the leadership last year and boosted party membership. “He didn't appear to try,” Behr writes.
The European Green group, to which the Green party of England and Wales is affiliated, has issued a statement observing that fewer than 1% of members voted for the anti-Zionism motion and that Green MPs and other senior figures opposed it. The group seeks “clarity from the leadership”.
Extreme position and wider alienation
Behr argues that the party's position is more extreme than that held by the Palestinian Authority, as it rejects a two-state solution on the basis that Israel is illegitimate in its conception. He suggests that some Green veterans suspect the party has been captured by a well-organised caucus of militant left activists who have been looking for a new host since Jeremy Corbyn lost control of Labour.
Behr concludes that Polanski is a talented communicator only when his audience is predisposed to like the message. “He had the opportunity at the Brighton conference to demonstrate a different kind of authority… It is the stuff of which leadership is made. Polanski doesn't have it. If those are also qualities the voters of Holborn and St Pancras care for in a local MP, they will have to seek them elsewhere.”
