The three simple words ‘Zionism is Racism’ formed a controversial motion at the Green Party’s annual conference on October 4th, passed by 1022 in favour 813 against, with four of the five GP MPs opposing it. Leader Zack Polanski avoided being present at the Conference, then put out a statement about the general theme of Jews and Palestinians, which did not however touch upon the meaning of the motion. As a long-time green campaigner – who recalls being at the conference in the last century when the GP voted to change its name from Ecology Party to Green Party – I’d say this event makes history.
These three words do have an exact meaning. In debate on the topic I’d advise not using the word ‘Jew’ which will surely lead to a purely emotional discussion, usually with unpleasant accusations being hurled. In fact the J-word is undefinable which is partly why such a discussion will be fruitless – it will end up with the Chosen Ones claiming their usual victimhood. These days the GP has got an ace card with its eloquent and mercurial-minded leader Zach Polanski being Jewish, but will he come round to supporting the Party on this matter? If he doesn’t, if he and long-time Green MP Caroline Lucas decide to oppose it, the party could split.
Zionism in its original formulation had no such an inherently racist significance. The ‘Jewish homeland’ to use the fateful words of the 1917 Balfour Declaration was not generally seen as being racist. That was (I suggest) not inherently racist, because it stipulated that rights of local residents would be respected. However since 1948 ‘Zionism’ has acquired a consistent meaning, expressing an unvariable, nationally-expressed intention: an ‘exterminate thy neighbour’ policy has been followed, with neighbours treated as lice to be eradicated, regarding them as untermensch. The first Palestinian town to be erased was Deir Yassin, in 1948, which sent its message or terror throughout the Arab world. Homes started to be blown up, men and boys killed, then women and children sent to the open-air prison camp called Gaza. The horror, the ultimate horror of this plan has been and still is obfuscated by the British media. That is why this GP resolution is so important.
The Palestinians are semites, they are semitic people. Citizens of modern Israel are assuredly not, because by and large they are white Ashkenazis – from Europe and Russia, some from America. There is a small minority of Sephardic Jews in Israel, however they are not and have not been responsible for the Israeli policy. IDF soldiers are given the right-to-rape. So the official Israeli exterminate-thy-neighbour policy – steal his land, rape his daughters, kill, kill, kill – that totally does have a racial dimension. Israel does not have and never has had agreed-upon national boundaries. It always wants to expand, moving towards a fictitious and never-having-existed ‘Greater Israel’ of the ‘David and Solomon’ in the Old Testament.
The modern word ‘racism’ has got a simple meaning. It means that people or a person of one race is behaving unpleasantly towards those of another race and doing so on a racial basis. Does that apply to the present situation? Indeed it does, it applies 100%. That is a factual statement, not a political judgement. Zionism, as it has historically existed ever since 1948, is inherently and essentially racist.
There is a huge number of British people who are aghast with horror at Israel’s behaviour, however they are silenced because of the media condemnation of their feelings (damned as ‘anti-semitic’) This resolution now placed firmly at the centre of UK debate can tap into that deep, deep horror, and it can give to the GP a moral posture which the other parties cannot manage to achieve. This motion boldly affirms that the very existence of the Zionic enterprise is racist. Can we sustain that argument? I believe we can. That should in turn imply that we should favour a secular state for Palestine. Jerusalem should belong to all the world. That is not a terrible or shameful posture for the GP, on the contrary it gives a new hope to the world. Let the killing stop. Its called democracy actually – for the Holy Land, for Palestine: one man one vote.
GP Text explaining it: “”The motion urges the Green Party to declare itself an anti-Zionist party…It argues that Zionism underpins what it describes as an apartheid system between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. … This motion calls for the Rejection of the IHRA and JDA definitions of antisemitism which have been weaponised to silence legitimate criticisms of the actions of the state of Israel. In its dominant contemporary form, Zionism underpins a system of inequality, dispossession, and violence against Palestinians.
“The motion also calls for the Green Party to support the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, equal rights for all, and the right of return for Palestinians and their descendants. This vision rejects any notion of exclusion or supremacy and instead asserts a civic identity rooted in justice, equality, and self-determination for all. A democratic Palestinian state would therefore guarantee full political, civil, and religious rights for people of all backgrounds, Palestinians of every faith and those of none, as these lands did before the manifestations of Zionism upon them.”
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