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UK Green Party leader Zack Polanski said labeling allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza as antisemitic makes Jewish people less safe, The Telegraph reported on Friday.
Speaking at a by-election event in London hosted by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Polanski said criticism of the Israeli state was too often conflated with antisemitism.
“We need to separate anti-Semitism from criticism of the Israeli state,” he said, according to the newspaper.
Polanski says genocide terminology is not antisemitic
Polanski, who is Jewish, said many genocide scholars considered Israel’s war in Gaza to constitute genocide. He argued that using the term was not, in itself, antisemitic.
“I think as a Jewish community, we need to come together to recognize that when we call that anti-Semitic, we are making ourselves as Jewish people less safe,” he said.
The Telegraph characterized the remarks as suggesting that Jewish people were responsible for rising antisemitism in Britain. However, Polanski did not make that claim explicitly in the quotations published by the newspaper.
Audience members heckle Green Party leader
Polanski also reportedly described himself as an anti-Zionist during the event.
The Telegraph reported that audience members heckled him and that he did not directly answer repeated questions about whether Israel had a right to exist.
