OMM Redaksiyası
Britain’s Green Party voted on Sunday to classify Zionism as a form of racism, drawing condemnation from British Jewish groups and Israel’s government, Reuters reported.
The party, which won 6% of the vote in the 2024 national election, described Zionism as “an ethnonationalist political project” and renewed its call for the Labour government to end all arms trade with Israel.
What the motion says
The motion also reaffirmed the party’s support for self-determination and called for a single democratic state across historic Palestine, the Greens said in a statement.
The vote passed by 1,022 to 813, despite opposition from many senior party figures. Leader Zack Polanski did not vote. He is seeking election to Parliament on Thursday in the London constituency left vacant by former Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The meaning of Zionism, which inspired the establishment of the modern state of Israel in the 20th century, remains contested. Jewish groups sometimes define it as the right of Jewish people to self-determination.
Reactions to the vote
The Movement for Progressive Judaism condemned the decision, saying the Greens had made antisemitism party policy and become a racist party. It said that Jewish support for the motion would not prevent it from being used to discriminate against others.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had decided to bar Polanski from entering Israel. The ministry described the motion as antisemitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, arguing that it denied Jewish people the right to self-determination.
Mothin Ali, the Greens’ deputy leader and a supporter of the motion, told Sky News on Saturday that the Palestinian death toll in Israel’s conflict with Hamas was central to the vote. The conflict followed Hamas’s deadly 2023 attack on an Israeli music festival.
Ali said the motion defined Zionism as an ethnonationalist movement and associated it with ethnic cleansing and genocide. Britain’s government has said Israeli settlers’ actions in the West Bank amount to ethnic cleansing, while courts must determine whether other Israeli actions constitute genocide.
Israel rejects allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide. On Sunday, it urged other British political parties to condemn the vote, saying the Greens had adopted Hamas’s ideology of eliminating Israel through armed struggle.
Polanski and other senior Green Party figures said they would continue to condemn what they called the “heinous crimes of the Netanyahu government”, adding that support for Palestinian rights was not incompatible with support for Jewish people’s rights.
