08.10.2026

Straight from the playbook

Media-amplified outrage over the A105 ‘Zionism is racism’ motion has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, argues Carla Roberts. It is about imposing imperialist interests on a potential junior coalition partner

No wonder that Zack Polanski tried to postpone the conference¹ - officially so that activists could “concentrate” on the October 8 by-election in Holborn and St Pancras, where he is the Green Party’s candidate. However, the executive voted the proposal down - maybe they now regret the decision. Rather than showcasing the Greens as an acceptable coalition partner, their October 2-4 conference in Brighton has been entirely overshadowed by the very predictable row over the A105 ‘Zionism is racism’ motion.

At their spring conference, the Green Party’s ‘realo’ right and various Zionists had managed to filibuster proceedings with endless points of order, so the motion was not even voted on.² Perhaps that was the best possible outcome for Polanski, who missed the entire event. He spent the day dancing at the ‘Together against the right’ demonstration in London.

No such luck this time. He gave a decent enough opening speech, claiming that the government’s decision to deploy sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements was down to pressure from the Greens. A vastly exaggerated claim, but with a grain of truth. At the moment the Palestine solidarity movement has no other serious electoral outlet: “Vote Green, and watch Labour move.” But his decision to then head back to London was a big political mistake.

As an aside: so overarching has the media furore been over the Zionism motion that the fact that the Greens voted, quite incredibly, to drop their opposition to nuclear power, has gone almost entirely unnoticed. It is now described as a form of “low-carbon electricity generation”. The commitment to “phase out” the “nuclear industry” has been replaced with “fossil fuels”.³ Madness: nuclear power is not just vastly expensive and potentially disastrous, it is inextricably linked to the production of weapons of mass destruction.⁴

Carbon copy

There is now a clear split in the Green Party - in what looks like almost a carbon copy of the same issues playing out in the Labour Party from 2016 onwards. It is worth remembering that Polanski was on the wrong side in that civil war. As “a pro-European Jew”, he said, there were “two reasons I couldn’t vote for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn”, which is “rife with anti-Semitism”.⁵ He was still with the Liberal Democrats then and later apologised.

He certainly has learned a lesson from Corbyn’s (self-)defeat and was initially much better at standing up to the same sort of charges. It is to be welcomed that he recently came out as an “anti-Zionist”. But going AWOL in this crucial debate was a pathetic attempt to ‘stay neutral’. It could only ever backfire - and it did.

Mothin Ali, the party’s deputy leader, was the only Green ‘VIP’ to support the ‘Zionism is racism’ motion. Four of the party’s MPs had publicly opposed it ahead of the vote, as did former leader Caroline Lucas and co-deputy leader Rachel Millward. Hannah Spencer tried to ‘do a Polanski’ and kept schtum (though we hear she ‘privately’ mobilised against the motion).

As soon as the motion was adopted (by 1,022 to 813 votes), the usual suspects were first out of the gate: the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Campaign against Antisemitism and the Jewish Labour Movement all released pre-prepared statements. Various ‘legal threats’ were darkly mooted too. The Israeli government announced that Polanski is barred from entry. Donald Trump’s special ‘envoy for anti-Semitism’, rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, said that the US government will be making “representations” to the UK, whatever that means. Of course, those types could not care less about the presence (or not) of anti-Semitism in the Greens. They simply use every opportunity to delegitimise the Palestine solidarity movement and give cover to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

They were followed by 18 Labour MPs who reported the Greens to Sussex police and the so-called Equality and Human Rights Commission. Among the 18 are outstanding citizens, such as Zionist Luke Akehurst and Mark Sewards, the chair of Labour Friends of Israel.⁶ Not to be outdone, the ever so leftwing Angela Rayner wrote on X: “Today’s vote at the Green Party conference crosses a line and is rightly being condemned across the political spectrum.”⁷

Various Labour grandees have followed suit, trying to prove that they have moved on from Corbynism and are now very responsible in managing capitalism. Our sanctions are merely symbolic, you see, and do not mean that we will stop supporting Israel. While Andy Burnham has said nothing, unnamed ‘sources’ have let it be known that the Greens in their current state are not considered potential coalition partners (another indicator that a snap election is unlikely).

Then there are various ‘useful idiots’ like Peter Tatchell (who believes there is a ‘good’ variety of Zionism); Novara’s Aaron Bastani (“Is Zionism racism? … it is a legitimate debate”)⁸; the European Greens (“we unequivocally distance ourselves”)⁹ and various rightwing Greens who have publicly quit, including Sandy Ruthven, the chair of Amnesty International UK’s charitable trust. The Socialist Party in England and Wales too has denounced the motion¹⁰, as have some of the more straightforward pro-imperialist outfits like the Alliance for Workers Liberty.¹¹

We have made no secret of our criticisms of the Green Party - it is not a working-class party, it does not fight for socialism. On the contrary, it wants to tweak capitalism in the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. But clearly the current attacks against the Greens are a direct attack on the Palestine solidarity movement. Any socialist who cannot oppose those attacks should hang their head in shame.

Say what you will about the Greens or motion A105 (and we do have some disagreements, see below) - but at least the decisions taken at their conference are binding. That is certainly better than the charade that is the Labour Party conference - or the farce that was the founding conference of Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party.

But when it comes to annual conference, the delegate system used by the Labour Party is way more democratic than the so-called ‘direct democracy’ of the Greens. All members were able to attend the three-day conference, either in person (£80; £50 for those on ‘lower income’) or online (£40; £25). Members could have even attended online just for one day, for a tenner - and yet, less than 2,000 people bothered voting on this important issue - not even one per cent of the entire membership of 230,000.¹² This illustrates how entirely unengaged Green Party members are.

In an article lampooning this ‘direct democracy’ and looking at alternative options, The Guardian quotes ‘insiders’, who think that it might be problematic “to give MPs greater authority over members, because it would undermine the party’s commitment to grassroots democracy”. Another ‘Green insider’ suggests that “members [ie, conference] could determine broad strategic priorities, with smaller bodies developing detailed policy.”¹³ The most obvious and only democratic alternative - a structure with elected, accountable delegates - does not even occur.

One or two?

Motion A105 basically reflects the bog-standard view of the left: it supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, demands the de-proscription of Palestine Action and freedom for Palestinian political prisoners. All supportable. We also agree that “anti-Zionism should not be equated with anti-Semitism” and there is no question that “Zionism is racism”: the Israeli government has been racially discriminating against the non-Hebrew population. Fact. Even the UN says it.

Zionism is inverted anti-Semitism: it too considers Jews a race - a race of outsiders, who will always face persecution from gentiles, which is why they have to ‘return’ to Israel. It explains the disdain for assimilation and the dogma of eternal anti-Semitism. It is innate in all non-Jews - or so the Zionist myth goes.

It is also utter nonsense to claim that the “right to resistance” equates to “terrorism”. Particularly as the motion - wrongly - specifies that “the struggle to achieve that liberation by all available means under international law is legitimate”. What if the Palestinians - who are victims of genocide, no less - take actions that are not permitted under international law? For example, often there are not clear lines between the military and civilians in Israel. There are a number of such legalistic references. No doubt they have been included in the name of appearing ‘respectable’ and to ward off attacks. The current backlash proves how misguided and futile such attempts are.

We understand that 15 amendments were submitted, four of those tabled and only one amendment, number 4, went through - a purely administrative clarification to make sure that the party’s rulebooks and existing policy documents are updated.

Amendment 3 sought to “protect” Jewish party members who attend venues that identify as Zionist (such as synagogues or community centres) from being disciplined internally under the Green Party’s racism policy. This was rejected by 1,086 votes to 684 - and quite rightly. It was seen as an attempt to sabotage the motion. Nonetheless, Polanski supported it - and issued a statement declaring that “as leader I will not accept any exclusion, or refusal to engage with anyone, because of the religious or communal body they are part of”.

We are not in the Green Party, but, when faced with members who identify as Zionists, the first task is to engage, challenge and educate. Exclusion should only be the last resort. In the process, all can learn. But the idea of happily co-existing with Zionist members is surely a giveaway. It is code for a Green junior minister (or two) going along with and accepting established British foreign policy in the name of political ‘realism’.

Amendments

Polanski and various Green grandees also supported (failed) amendments 1 and 2, which sought to remove the motion’s commitment to “a single democratic Palestinian state”, as this is in opposition to the previous Green Party support for the so-called two-state solution.

In our view, both options are no solutions at all. The ‘two-state solution’ is dead, kept alive to preserve the pretence of upholding democratic and humanitarian values. The ‘one-state solution’ is sincere but equally illusory: how can the Israeli population be persuaded or forced into a single Palestinian capitalist state? At present Israeli (Hebrew) people, including workers, enjoy massive political and economic advantages over Palestinians. Will they voluntarily surrender their national privileges to join a single state where they will have to directly compete, not least on the labour market, with the Palestinian underclass?

And who is to make them do it? Today in Gaza and on the West Bank the Palestinian population stands on the brink of another nakba. Hamas is in no position to beat the IDF in Gaza, or the West Bank, let alone within pre-1967 Israel. As for Fatah, it is an Israeli collaborator, an asset when it comes to maintaining the Israeli occupation.

The British government might well recognise the Palestinian state in the name of the ‘two-state solution’. But there is no Palestinian state, only a pulverised, traumatised, half-occupied Gaza and a patchwork of increasingly fragmented Arab reservations on the West Bank, ruled over in the one case by an Islamic militia and by a thoroughly corrupt and compromised elite on the other.

No, the only viable solution is regional ... led by a working class that fights for a socialist federation, internationalism and universal human liberation. Only such a movement could conceivably be strong enough to win over the Israeli working class by assuring it that they too have little to lose, everything to win.