The Greens<\/a> passed the motion by 1,022 votes to 813 at their party conference in Brighton, but it has been criticised by virtually all other British political parties and has brought turmoil to the Greens.<\/p>\nSeveral of its left-wing MPs have criticised the move, and on Thursday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham ruled out partnering with the party, calling the motion \u201cwrong\u201d and \u201canti-Semitic\u201d.<\/p>\n
The motion defines Zionism, the belief that Jews have a historic claim to Palestine, as a form of racism, predicated on the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Palestinians made up more than 90 percent of the population in 1917, when Britain declared its support for a Jewish state in the country.<\/p>\n
The motion supports Palestinians\u2019 right to self-determination and calls for the establishment of a single democratic state in historic Palestine for Muslims and Jews. It also says that anti-Zionism should not be equated with anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n
\u2018Personally smeared\u2019<\/p>\n
Fifty-six members of Speitan\u2019s family have been killed since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza three years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cZionism is defined clearly as an ethnonationalist settler-colonial project. The motion also recognises, correctly, that not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews,\u201d she said. \u201cIt targets an ideology: Zionism.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that she has been \u201cpersonally smeared\u201d by media outlets.<\/p>\n
Recent headlines in the British press have claimed she was \u201cfriends\u201d with an \u201cal-Qaeda terrorist\u201d, as she reportedly offered to testify in defence of Minh Quang Pham, a UK citizen who had planned an attack at Heathrow Airport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis tactic of guilt by association will not be dignified with a response,\u201d Speitan said of the reports.<\/p>\n
The Green Party of England and Wales told Al Jazeera that Speitan holds no party positions \u201cother than being a member\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Green Party takes all allegations of this nature seriously. Where members have expressed views that do not fit in with the party\u2019s values, we have internal processes to investigate, and an investigation is under way,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Media watchdog NewsCord, which reviewed coverage of the motion, concluded that opponents of the resolution received 10 times more coverage than its supporters.<\/p>\n
The Green Party is not the first Western political institution to classify Zionism as a form of racism<\/a>. In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring that Zionism was a racist ideology. Seventy-two countries voted in favour of the motion, while 35 opposed it and 32 abstained. The resolution was later repealed in 1991.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lubna Speitan, who has Palestinian roots, believes messages and emails are part of an effort to intimidate her.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32539,591,59,39473,57,58,937,9084,590,632,50,9086,10040,22874,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-803671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-europe","tag-gb","tag-genocide","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-human-rights","tag-israel","tag-israel-palestine-conflict","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-palestine","tag-qatar","tag-racism","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}