The Greens have fallen to anti-Semitism – this is not the party I joined

The adoption of the ‘Zionism is racism’ motion by the Green Party has sent shockwaves across political society nationally and internationally. It is a crisis unlike any other in the party’s history. At its root lies a refusal to listen to, or even to understand, the positions of opponents. This should terrify us, because the idea that one is infallible lies at the root of authoritarianism.

Widespread, unequivocal condemnation has flowed from every quarter in just the first 24 hours. The European Green Party has distanced itself from the Green Party of England and Wales. Over a dozen Labour MPs have written to the police, alleging anti-Semitic hate incidents at last weekend’s Green Party conference, where the motion was voted on. Resignations have included Jewish and non-Jewish party activists, as well as the chair of Amnesty International, Sandy Ruthven. Israel has barred Zack Polanski from the country.

Let us be clear and unequivocal: Zionism is not racism. This is the central lie of the motion. The establishment of a homeland for Jews as Jews, born from the unconscionable atrocities endured by the Jewish people, is not of itself a racist project but an anti-racist one.

Efforts were made during conference debate to moderate the motion. These included support for a two-state solution and ensuring that party members would not be expelled for practising their faith in synagogues.

That both compromises were comprehensively defeated proves the motion is profoundly anti-Semitic and racist in itself. In a pamphlet from Greens For Palestine, no ink is used to address the concern that Israel, as a homeland for Jews, would no longer have a right to exist. The question for the architects of this policy was not whether to use 1947, 1949 or 1967 borders established by the United Nations. It was about eradicating the state entirely. This bears an unconscionable resemblance to Hamas’s stated objectives.

In today’s Green Party, members are to do as they are told, fall into ideological line and avoid free thinking at all costs. Identitarian politics demands loyalty to slogans rather than scrutiny of them. To question the slogan is heresy. Small wonder, then, that when someone does advance a serious argument, it is more likely to be met with groupthink suspicion or tin-eared intransigence than curiosity or a willingness to learn.

I was an active Green Party member, until I was ostracised over my gender-critical views. I served as deputy leader from 2014 to 2016. I joined the protest against the ‘Zionism is racism’ motion outside the conference venue and got a chance to engage with some of our members on their plans to vote for the motion. One member appeared dumbstruck when I suggested, after listening attentively to his discussion with a Jewish protester, that I would like to offer a different conclusion based on premises he should accept. ‘Premises?’, he said, incredulously.

Eventually, leading Greens such as Caroline Lucas, Carla Denyer, Siân Berry, Ellie Chowns, Adrian Ramsay and Zack Polanski made their opposition to the motion known. Even if, in Polanski’s case, it was in particularly cowardly fashion – with the party leader slinking off to campaign in Holborn and St Pancras rather than cast a vote. But it was too little, too late. None of their objections, to my mind, was strong enough. Instead, they sought to capitulate to the mob with weakly phrased caveats that hardly did justice to what was at stake.

They lacked the courage to confront the pro-Palestinian activists head-on, to point out that this was a dangerous, anti-Semitic motion. It was as if most opponents of the motion had not fully grasped its implications themselves, but were motivated primarily by fear of negative media coverage and a panic to mitigate it.

The members of the party elite, though many of them voted against the motion, are partly responsible for the current crisis. They embraced the surge in membership fuelled by Polanski’s single-issue campaigning on Gaza and Palestine. They had nothing to say about the epidemic of anti-Semitic candidates flocking to the Greens, or the exponential rise in anti-Semitism in the UK. We are left to conclude that the logical endpoint of the party’s new policy is the disappearance of Israel as a sovereign state.

I am deeply saddened and ashamed of what has become of the party that I have served for the best part of two decades. More so, I am terrified of what hard-left authoritarianism, now firmly installed within the Green Party, has unleashed upon us.

The fate of liberal democratic politics in this country is more important than the future of the Green Party. That is why I must urge all electors to punish the Greens at the ballot box for the foreseeable future. The public should adopt a zero-tolerance approach to far-left authoritarianism.

The Green Party has become a danger to the values it once claimed to defend. It has become a danger to Jews and a danger to the culture of free inquiry upon which liberal democracy depends. This motion cannot be disowned, nor can the political culture that produced it. Only by confronting both of these things honestly, and taking ownership of its grievous missteps, can the party begin to find its way back.

Shahrar Ali was deputy leader of the Green Party of England and Wales between 2014 and 2016 and won the first gender-critical case for unlawful discrimination against a political party in 2024. You can support his current case here.