"Yes, I've taken a loss tonight, but our movement is so much bigger than one election or one motion."

"I put all my energy into the race in Holborn and St Pancras, despite Labour choosing the polling date so close to our conference, because I know that ultimately electoral success is how we drive change. I know, though, that some feel let down by that decision – and I hear that."

"[I would have voted against the motion but I agree] with the substance [and have no intention of  resigning]."

"It has been difficult knowing how to approach this imperfect motion, because its substance chimes with my understanding of Zionism as the ideology that underpins the displacement and genocide of Palestinians."

"This is something I share with many other Jewish people, including Stephen Kapos, the Holocaust survivor who was one of those supporting the motion."

"At the same time, Zionism is not easily defined, and I know for many Jewish people it is bound up with identity, safety and belonging. In my view it’s not the job of a political party to tell people what to believe – and a narrow focus on definitions is neither desirable nor strategic."

"There are also elements of the motion that I don’t agree with, such as dictating the future shape of a state in Israel and Palestine. While many people understandably see the idea of a two-state solution as standing in the way of concrete action to end the unbearable status quo, I believe it is not up to the British government – let alone the Green party – to decide the future for Israelis and Palestinians."

"Our party democracy must now evolve to meet that – creating wider engagement for members, giving leaders more responsibility to set the party’s strategic direction, and making our processes as robust and accessible as possible."

"What I'm experiencing is the immense amount of people who are saying they've never been prouder to be a Green Party member."

Zack Polanski, leader British Green Party

 

"I would have hoped he would have been a very strong critic of this motion."

"I want him to show the leadership that was frankly missing on Sunday."

"[I think the jury is out about whether he will do that, but I very much hope he will."

Former British Green Party leader Caroline Lucas 

Did the Zionism row lose it for Zack Polanski? | Politics Weekly

 

The parliamentary by-election lost by the Green Party was most definitely not good news for either Zack Polanski or the party; its temporary rise in the esteem of a greater proportion of the British electorate that inspired hope in the party that its performance would continue to find favour with the voting public has been dashed in the reality of waning support that followed the euphoria felt of a growing popularity, under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer. 

 

The party's recent conference which resulted in the adoption of a new Israel policy labelling Zionism as racist, calling for a single Palestinian state to engulf and destroy Israel has now to be dealt with to the satisfaction of its internal critics. His year-old leadership when the 43-year-old's easygoing manner helped it gain popularity, leading to its February by-election win as well as the May local elections when the party racked up hundreds of council seats had given the party new confidence.

 

Its membership soared to over 200,000 from its previous 68,000 when Greens support stood at 21 percent in opinion polls, almost equal in public opinion with the ruling Labour party. Polanski's own inattention to details and public perception stood him in ill stead when he reposted on social media a photograph of a T-shirt subtly encouraging the untimely death of Reform U.K. leader Nigel Farage. As an outspoken critic on the Gaza war, accusing Israel of committing genocide, the motion passed at last month's conference did not stray too far from his personal sentiments.

 

At the conference where the party's membership, not its leader, is permitted to establish policy, 1,022 members (0.4% of total membership) responded favourably to a motion that declared Zionism as a form of racism and calling for a single Palestinian state. Five of the party's MPs opposed the motion that drew the European Green party's notice, which supports a two-state solution. Despite which the motion passed by 1,022 votes to 813. Prompting the Greens' Westminster leader Ellie Chowns to point out the risk of extremists and racists capturing the party, demonstrating a vital need to modernize policymaking.

That the leadership of the Green Party in Britain is a Jew, raised in a conventional Jewish household, finding it in himself to acquiesce to the ideological philosophy of racists interpreting the reestablishment of the State of Israel on its own ancestral geography as being a racist apartheid enterprise, prepared to support a motion that would destroy the state in favour of handing it over to the colonialist enterprise of Arabs from Syria, Jordan and Egypt who claim the land as its own, speaks volumes of his warped mind

 

Citing the opposition to a Jewish state by a former child Holocaust survivor, makes one feel a similarity strangely shadows the proceedings, between the Kapos who during the Holocaust handled the Zyklon B-asphyxiated Jewish victims to shovel them into the gaping maw of the incinerators, to prolong their own lives, as Nazi enablers of the Final Solution, and one whose vehement denial of Zionism whose name bears a striking resemblance.

 

Holocaust Survivor Stephen Kapos meets Francesca Albanese SOAS 11.11.24

 

As for the two-state solution; it had its time in history. For over a lifetime of events one generation after another, Israel waited for the Palestinian leaders to acknowledge the internationally legal, immovable presence and right-of-existence-sovereignty of the State of Israel -- without which no formal agreement on statehood for Palestinians side-by-side with Israel would be possible -- in vain. While repeatedly attesting to the international community that Palestinians wanted peace along with their own state, among themselves they spoke an entirely different language of 'resistance to occupation'.

 

From the Palestinian refusal in 1947 to the United Nations' offer of Partition, with Israel accepting its geographic portion, a narrow strip representing a slender proportion of original Judaic territory dating back millennia in ancient history of the Middle East, the leadership of the Palestinians consistently, turned down all succeeding offers that would have resulted in the state they demanded, holding out for the state they envisioned they were entitled to, 'from the river to the sea'. 

 

There is no honour among those who view Israel, Zionism and the existential-need of a Jewish homeland as 'racist' and irrelevant in the greater need to accommodate Arabs calling themselves Palestinian, when they could just as well rename themselves "Jordanians" in reflection of a country where they form the majority, yet ruled over by a Hashemite kingdom, which keeps a wary eye out to ensure there is no repeat of 'Black September'.  Ironically enough, it was Mandate Britain that administered the territory and which failed to respect history, heritage and honour; the Green Party has picked up where Mandate Britain left off.