By Shahnoor Saqib — SCN News
BRIGHTON, England — Britain's Green Party has voted to formally classify Zionism as a form of racism and declare itself an anti-Zionist party, adopting one of the most consequential positions on Israel and Palestine taken by a mainstream British political party while exposing a significant divide between grassroots members and some of its most prominent elected figures. Members approved the motion by 1,022 votes to 813 at the party's conference in Brighton on Sunday, after an emotionally charged debate over Palestinian rights, Jewish identity and the political consequences of placing opposition to Zionism inside the party's anti-racism framework. The decision immediately triggered criticism from Jewish organizations and Israel while forcing Green leaders to confront questions about how the new policy will be interpreted and implemented.
The adopted motion defines Zionism as an ethnonationalist political project and says the party will treat it within its wider approach to racism. It also formally establishes the Greens as an anti-Zionist party, reaffirms support for Palestinian self-determination and the right of return, backs the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and maintains the party's demand for a complete British arms embargo against Israel. The policy additionally supports establishing a single democratic state throughout historic Palestine rather than prescribing the two-state framework traditionally supported by successive British governments.
Supporters argued that the motion distinguishes opposition to a political ideology from hostility toward Jewish people and therefore should not be characterized as antisemitic. They maintain that Zionism has produced a political system under which Palestinians have suffered displacement, occupation and unequal treatment, and that opposing that system is consistent with the Greens' wider commitments to anti-racism and universal human rights. The party's official response after the vote similarly insisted that its support for Palestinian liberation exists alongside an unequivocal opposition to racism in all its forms.
The decision nevertheless generated immediate condemnation from prominent Jewish organizations, which argue that Zionism encompasses a much wider range of beliefs than the definition adopted by the motion. Critics contend that many Jewish people understand Zionism primarily as support for Jewish national self-determination or Israel's continued existence rather than endorsement of any particular Israeli government or its policies. Treating the entire ideology as racism, they argue, risks creating an environment in which Jewish members associated with Zionist synagogues, organizations or beliefs could themselves face exclusion.
That concern had already produced significant debate inside the Greens before Sunday's vote. Jewish members of the party were not united either for or against the proposal, complicating attempts to portray the controversy as a straightforward conflict between Jewish Greens and pro-Palestinian activists. A survey conducted by Jewish Greens found that most respondents identified as non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, but the membership remained sufficiently divided over the specific motion that the group declined to adopt a collective position on whether it should pass.
The same survey revealed why the wording remained controversial even among members broadly sympathetic to Palestinian demands. Some respondents feared the policy could make discrimination against Jewish members more likely, while others rejected the argument that defining Zionism as racism was itself discriminatory. A substantial majority expressed concern about what adopting the motion could mean for the Green Party's electoral prospects, suggesting that disagreement extended beyond ideology to questions about how the policy would affect the party's wider political ambitions.
Those concerns reached the highest levels of the party. Several prominent Green figures had warned against adopting the motion without safeguards intended to protect Jewish members and recognize the diversity of views associated with Zionism. The disagreement was particularly sensitive because the party has been attempting to expand beyond its traditional environmental base and establish itself as a larger force on Britain's political left.
Party leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish and describes himself as anti-Zionist, did not participate in Sunday's vote because he had left the conference to campaign in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Before leaving Brighton, he had sought changes to the proposal and emphasized equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis rather than allowing the party to dictate the precise constitutional structure of a future settlement. The failure to resolve those concerns before the membership vote leaves him responsible for leading a party whose conference has now adopted a position more categorical than the one he had publicly attempted to shape.
The aftermath demonstrated that tension almost immediately. The Greens' five MPs, party leader and co-deputy leaders issued a joint statement emphasizing that there is no contradiction between supporting Palestinian rights and protecting the rights of Jewish people. They pledged to oppose discrimination and harassment while continuing to condemn Israeli government actions, occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and what they describe as genocide.
That statement did not reverse the conference decision, which is now party policy, but its language illustrated the balancing act confronting the leadership. Green representatives must defend the democratic right of members to determine policy while reassuring Jewish supporters that opposition to Zionism will not become a mechanism for judging individual Jews by their political beliefs, religious institutions or associations. How the party implements the motion may therefore prove more consequential than the conference vote itself.
The controversy is particularly significant because Zionism does not have one universally accepted political definition. Historically, the movement developed around the establishment of a Jewish national home and ultimately the creation of Israel in 1948, but contemporary Zionists hold widely differing positions on borders, Palestinian statehood, settlements, religion and the policies of Israeli governments. Some support a two-state settlement and strongly oppose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while others advocate territorial positions rejected by much of the international community.
Anti-Zionism is similarly diverse. Some opponents reject any state organized around ethnic or religious national identity, while others specifically oppose the circumstances under which Israel was established and the continuing displacement and occupation experienced by Palestinians. Still others support replacing Israel and the Palestinian territories with a single democratic state in which Jews and Palestinians would possess equal citizenship.
The Green motion places the party much closer to that final position. Its support for one democratic Palestinian state across historic Palestine goes significantly beyond criticizing Netanyahu's government, Israeli settlements or military operations in Gaza. It challenges the existing political structure of Israel as a specifically Jewish state and therefore places the Greens outside the two-state consensus that has traditionally framed official British diplomacy.
Supporters see that departure as necessary because they argue decades of negotiations have failed to produce a viable Palestinian state. Israel's settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, the devastation of Gaza and continuing conflict have strengthened arguments among some activists that territorial separation is no longer realistically achievable. A single democratic state, they contend, would replace competing national claims with equal individual political rights.
Opponents see a different implication. They argue that eliminating Israel's status as a Jewish state would end the form of Jewish national self-determination created after centuries of persecution and the Holocaust, even if Jewish residents were promised equal citizenship in a successor state. That disagreement explains why apparently similar commitments to equal rights can produce fundamentally different conclusions about the political future of Israelis and Palestinians.
The dispute has become even more sensitive because of the war that followed the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza. Enormous Palestinian casualties and destruction have transformed public debate across Britain, strengthening pro-Palestinian activism while simultaneously increasing Jewish concerns about antisemitism. Political parties attempting to address one form of fear or discrimination are consequently under intense scrutiny over whether their language aggravates the other.
The Greens have moved substantially toward the Palestinian side of that political debate. The party already supported ending British arms sales to Israel, sanctions against Israeli officials and stronger action over occupation and settlements. Sunday's decision moves beyond those policy disputes by defining the ideological foundation of a Jewish state itself as incompatible with the party's anti-racist principles.
That shift could create political opportunities as well as risks. The Greens have attracted voters dissatisfied with Labour's handling of Gaza and have gained members from sections of the left seeking a political home more explicitly supportive of Palestinian demands. A clear anti-Zionist position could strengthen that appeal among activists who believe Britain's major parties remain too cautious toward Israel.
The same decision could make expansion into other constituencies more difficult. Jewish organizations have warned that the policy may alienate Jewish voters, while opponents inside the party fear it could become an electoral vulnerability whenever Green candidates are asked whether supporting Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state constitutes racism. Rival parties are likely to repeatedly test Green candidates on precisely that distinction.
The controversy also demonstrates the consequences of the Greens' unusually strong commitment to internal democracy. Conference members possess significant power to shape policy, meaning grassroots activists can adopt positions even when senior elected representatives have reservations about them. Supporters regard that structure as an alternative to highly centralized political parties, while critics argue that relatively small conference electorates can impose nationally consequential policies on a rapidly expanding membership.
Only 1,835 votes separated the two sides participating in Sunday's decision, with 1,022 supporting the motion and 813 opposing it. Those numbers represent a small proportion of the party's overall membership, making the vote an illustration of both the power and potential vulnerability of conference-based policymaking. A policy capable of defining the party nationally can therefore emerge from a membership process in which most members did not personally cast a ballot.
For Polanski, the challenge now extends beyond Israel and Palestine. His leadership has been built partly around expanding the Greens into a more significant national political force capable of attracting voters dissatisfied with Labour while retaining environmentalists and progressive activists. Managing a policy that divides senior representatives and provokes intense reaction from Jewish organizations will test whether that broader coalition can remain together as the party grows.
The Green Party's decision therefore matters for more than its wording about Zionism. It represents a collision between three forces reshaping Britain's political left: intense anger over Palestinian suffering, concern about antisemitism and Jewish inclusion, and a rapidly expanding Green movement whose grassroots members expect genuine control over policy. Those forces do not divide neatly into opposing camps, as the disagreement among Jewish Greens themselves demonstrates.
The immediate result is clear: Britain's Greens are now formally an anti-Zionist party and their conference has instructed the organization to treat Zionism as a form of racism. What remains unresolved is how that principle will operate when applied to actual members, candidates, Jewish institutions and future policy decisions involving Israel and Palestine.
That implementation will determine whether Sunday's vote primarily strengthens the Greens' identity as Britain's most explicitly pro-Palestinian mainstream party or produces a lasting internal conflict over antisemitism, political inclusion and the limits of grassroots policymaking. The conference settled the wording of the policy, but it did not settle the argument surrounding it.