UK Green Party Votes to Define Zionism as a Form of Racism

LONDON: Britain’s Green Party has voted to classify Zionism as a form of racism, a decision that has drawn criticism from British Jewish organisations and the Israeli government.

The motion was approved by 1,022 votes to 813 at the party’s annual conference in Brighton. It describes Zionism as an “ethnonationalist political project” and calls for the ideology to be treated as any other form of racism.

The motion also reaffirmed the party’s support for Palestinian self-determination and called for the establishment of a single democratic state throughout historic Palestine with equal rights for all. The party also repeated its call for the UK government to end arms sales to Israel.

The Green Party said the motion was directed at Zionism as a political ideology rather than at Jews as an ethnic or religious group, stressing that not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jewish.

Party leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, did not participate in the vote because he had left the conference to campaign in a parliamentary by-election in London. He has defended the motion’s position while saying that support for Palestinian rights is compatible with support for the rights of Jewish people.

Four of the party’s five MPs publicly opposed the motion. Some Jewish members have also expressed concern about the policy, while Jewish organisations in Britain accused the party of adopting an antisemitic position.

Israel’s government criticised the decision and said the motion denied the Jewish people’s right to self-determination. Israeli authorities also barred Polanski from entering Israel following the vote.

Britain’s governing Labour Party said the Green Party’s decision had crossed a line and should be condemned across the political spectrum. The UK government has separately said that questions over whether specific Israeli actions constitute genocide should be determined through the courts, while maintaining its position that actions by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank amount to ethnic cleansing. Israel rejects allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The vote comes amid continuing political debate in Britain over the war in Gaza, Palestinian statehood, Israel’s military operations and the definition and treatment of antisemitism in political organisations.

The Green Party’s decision is now part of its formal policy, although the party does not require all of its elected representatives to support every policy adopted at its annual conference.