Why the UK Greens’ Zionism is racism motion matters

Since the Green Party of England and Wales adopted the “Zionism is racism” motion following a membership vote of 1022-813 at its party conference last weekend, it has provoked intense opposition. Backlash has come not only from the right and much of the mainstream press but also from sections of liberal and left media.

Opponents inside and outside the party are even trying to attribute the motion to Party leader Zack Polanski’s loss in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.

The motion itself defines Zionism as an ethnonationalist political project and asserts the Party’s commitment to Palestinian liberation, the right of return, BDS, and a full arms embargo against Israel. Moreover, it calls for establishing a single, democratic State across historic Palestine.

Whatever one thinks of every clause of the motion, its political significance extends beyond the text itself. A proposition long confined to Palestinian liberation movements and the anti-imperialist left has become the formal policy of a British parliamentary party. That represents a significant shift in the terrain on which Palestine is debated in electoral politics.

Fifty years of ‘Zionism is racism’

The assertion that Zionism is a form of racism is hardly new to the Palestinian national movement. In November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, which determined that Zionism was a form of racism and racial discrimination. Despite this being revoked in 1991, the political argument it embodied did not disappear with it.

In the decades that followed, Palestinian organisations have been joined by major international and human rights bodies in documenting systems of domination and discrimination against the Palestinian people. During the Second Intifada, the world witnessed Israeli tanks storm Palestinian refugee camps. We saw 12-year-old Mohammed Al-Durrah murdered in his father’s arms by the Israeli military in Gaza. In 2021, a global uprising erupted in response to the theft of the El-Kurd family home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Jerusalem. In 2022, we watched the footage of the murder of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

We have spent the last three years dumbfounded in horror at the genocidal violence waged in Gaza, livestreamed by brave young journalists on the ground.

At the level of international law, Al-Haq has been defending Palestinian human rights since 1979, conducting research, preparing reports, and intervening on breaches of international human rights – work that has seen them sanctioned by the United States.

International NGOs have also documented the grave human rights abuses against the Palestinian people. In 2021, Human Rights Watch concluded that Israeli authorities were committing crimes against humanity. In 2022, Amnesty International concluded that Israeli authorities impose a system of apartheid against Palestinians.

This evidence makes it increasingly difficult to treat Palestinian descriptions of their oppression as illegitimate or unfounded. This is why 50 years after Resolution 3379, Palestinians and their allies are still advancing a fundamental challenge: that a political order that privileges one national group while dispossessing, displacing or subordinating another cannot be genuinely reconciled with equality.

Reversing the burden

The significance of the motion passing becomes clearer when placed alongside another definition that has shaped British politics over the last decade. In May 2016, the IHRA adopted a non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism. In the aftermath, political parties, universities, councils, and other public bodies adopted it, sparking intense political struggle.

Significant segments of the Palestine movement organised against the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, arguing that it conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism and with genuine critique of the Zionist entity of Israel. The University and Colleges Union (UCU) and the British Medical Association (BMA) both passed motions rejecting the IHRA definition as a result of grassroots organising from their members.

The widespread adoption of the IHRA definition, or even the prospect of its adoption, meant much of the Palestine movement spent the following decade fighting on defensive terrain. Organisers and campaigners repeatedly found themselves required to establish that anti-Zionism did not equate antisemitism. They prefaced their responses and arguments with a rejection of antisemitism, explaining that advocacy for Palestinian liberation remained legitimate political speech and a valid aspiration.

The controversy surrounding Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party brought these debates into the centre of British electoral politics. Accusations of antisemitism, disputes over the IHRA definition, and arguments over the boundary between antisemitism and anti-Zionism became inseparable from the wider political struggle surrounding Corbynism. Against that history, the Green Party vote gains its greatest significance.

For years, the political question directed towards supporters of Palestine has effectively been: can you prove that your anti-Zionism is not antisemitic? The Green Party motion reverses that presumption so the question, instead, is: can a political ideology premised on maintaining Jewish supremacy through the displacement and discrimination of the native Palestinian population really be reconciled with principles of anti-racism?

For perhaps the first time in contemporary British parliamentary politics, proponents of Zionism are being asked to defend Zionism itself against an explicitly anti-racist framework. This is the paradigm shift the Green Party vote represents.

The motion's impact extends beyond its wording. It marks a change in the terms on which Palestine can be discussed within British electoral politics. For decades, Palestinians and our allies have been forced onto the defensive, required repeatedly to justify our opposition to Zionism and to prove the legitimacy of our struggle. Passing this motion brings a position long articulated within the Palestinian national movement into mainstream party politics.

Whether the Green Party caves to the backlash or other political institutions follow remains to be seen. Polanski holding the line on the motion's argument, despite his defeat in the by-election last night, is a good sign. Nevertheless, regardless of what happens in the coming weeks and months, the proposition that Zionism should be subjected to an anti-racist critique is no longer a discussion taking place solely at the political margins, and that is a win worth celebrating.

Jeanine Hourani is a London-based writer and community organiser. She’s a PhD candidate in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter and a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

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