By Shireen Akram-Boshar

This article was originally published by Truthout

The Green Party motion also calls for a single state in historic Palestine with equal rights for all.

On Sunday, the United Kingdom’s Green Party passed a motion defining Zionism as a form of racism. Within hours of the vote, Israel’s foreign ministry responded, slamming the motion and barring Green Party leader Zack Polanski from entering Israel. 

“The Greens have adopted not only the green of Hamas, but also its ideology: the elimination of the State of Israel through armed struggle,” Israel’s foreign ministry posted on X, speciously comparing the left-wing British political party to the Palestinian resistance group.

The foreign ministry also called on the U.K.’s Labour Party to denounce the motion. 

The motion passed at the Green Party’s annual conference on Sunday in a vote of 1,022 to 813. In addition to denouncing Zionism, it calls for a single state in historic Palestine with equal rights for all, with the right of return for Palestinians. The motion also acknowledges the right of Palestinians to resist, and reasserts the Green Party’s commitment to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and a total arms embargo. 

Israeli politicians from various political parties smeared the motion.

“Those who claim the antisemitic lie that ‘Zionism is racism’ deliberately endanger Jews and Israelis everywhere,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog posted on X after its passage.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on social media that “the UK Green Party has chosen to side with terrorists and antisemites” as Israel prepares to mark three years since the October 7 attack. 

Notably, the vote was passed through the rank-and-file membership — which has nearly tripled in size over the past year since the election of Green Party Leader Zack Polanski and left-wing voters leaving the Labour Party over its stance on Gaza. But Polanski himself did not vote on the motion, and other Green Party leaders distanced themselves from the motion. 

Backlash has also emerged within the U.K., including from members of the Labour Party — some of whom are calling on Labour leader Andy Burnham to rule out forming a coalition with the Greens.

This is not surprising, Charlie Hore, a socialist activist in the U.K., explained to Truthout — but it ignores the fact that the Palestine solidarity movement has transformed U.K. politics. 

“At the Labour Party conference earlier this month, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband was forced to say that the Labour government had gotten Gaza wrong. What forced that is the massive shift in public opinion in the last couple of years in favor of Palestine and against Israel,” explained Hore.

The solidarity movement, and widespread shift in opinion, has also been credited as key to the Labour government imposing sanctions on Israeli settlements last month. 

“Every major party in British politics supports the state of Israel, despite the occasional criticism,” Hore said. “The Greens have chosen the side of Palestine, and that’s going to be a good thing for taking the Palestine solidarity movement forward.”

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