UK Green Party faces left-wing backlash over ‘Zionism is Racism’ vote

Amnesty UK trust chair quits Green Party after ‘Zionism Is Racism’ vote, European Green Party condemns measure which calls for the replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state.

By World Israel News Staff

The chair of Amnesty International UK’s charitable trust has quit the Green Party after its members formally declared Zionism a form of racism and endorsed replacing Israel with a single Palestinian state, accusing the party of tolerating prejudice in an effort to attract the hard left.

Sandy Ruthven MBE, a longtime Green member who previously stood as the party’s candidate for mayor of Bristol, announced his resignation following Sunday’s vote at the party’s annual conference in Brighton.

“My heart has always been with the Green Party of England and Wales,” Ruthven said, adding that the motion “marks the end of the line for me.”

Ruthven, who chairs the board of trustees of the Amnesty International UK Charitable Trust, said he was speaking in a personal capacity and accused his former party of applying a different standard to prejudice within its own political camp.

“In seeking to court the hard-left vote, we have failed to confront prejudice when it appears on our own side,” he said.

Ruthven said the decision had led the party “into a political cul-de-sac,” adding: “I sincerely hope the party finds a way back.”

The resignation adds to a widening backlash inside and outside the Greens after members voted 1,022 to 813 to adopt the motion, titled “Zionism is Racism.”

The newly adopted policy defines Zionism as an ideology supporting an “ethnonationalist Jewish State” and declares that it should be “treated as any other form of racism.”

It also commits the Greens to supporting “a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital,” with equal rights for residents and a right of return for Palestinians and their descendants.

Such a state would encompass Israel, Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip, ending Israel’s existence as a separate Jewish state.

The motion insists that its target is Zionist political ideology rather than Jews as a religious or ethnic group and notes that not all Jews identify as Zionists.

But Jewish critics within the party argued that the distinction offers them little practical protection because many mainstream British Jewish institutions, synagogues and communal organizations identify with or support Israel and Zionism.

Those fears intensified when delegates rejected an amendment intended to ensure that the new policy could not be used to pressure or discipline members because they belonged to Jewish communal institutions that describe themselves as Zionist.

Jewish Green Party members have described the vote as a profound rupture.

Vivien Lichtenstein, chair of Jewish Greens, said she was now considering whether she could remain in the party.

“I don’t think it’s helpful, and it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever to Palestinians,” she said of the motion.

Asked whether she planned to quit, Lichtenstein said: “Certainly it’s quite possible that I will leave the party.”

The measure had divided senior Greens even before the conference.

Four of the party’s five MPs opposed the motion, while former Green leader Caroline Lucas and other prominent figures warned that its language could alienate Jewish supporters.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, did not participate in the vote. He had left the Brighton conference to campaign in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.

The outcome has nevertheless left Polanski facing pressure over the direction of a party whose membership has expanded rapidly and whose internal policymaking gives rank-and-file members considerable power over official positions.

The motion was promoted by Greens for Palestine, whose supporters had encouraged sympathizers to join the party in time to participate in the policy process.

Critics have argued that the campaign demonstrated the Green Party’s vulnerability to organized ideological blocs, particularly as it seeks to capitalize electorally on dissatisfaction with Labour from the left.

The fallout has extended beyond Ruthven’s resignation.

Waterloo Green councillor Kieran Dams stepped down as coordinator of his local party after opposing the motion, saying he had subsequently received “hundreds of abusive and threatening messages.”

“Some are serious enough that I’ll be taking them to the police,” Dams said.

“I’m genuinely gutted it’s come to this, but I have to stand by what I believe.”

Leading British Jewish organizations and rabbis have also condemned the policy.

Progressive Judaism co-leaders Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy said the Greens had crossed the line from criticism of Israel into discrimination against Jews.

“Jewish self-determination is a right,” they said. “Declaring it racist is an attack on Jews.”

Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis described the policy as “poisonous antisemitism” and warned that it posed a threat not only to British Jews but to the wider country.

The dispute is also creating tension between the British Greens and their counterparts elsewhere in Europe.

The European Green Party said it had already contacted the Green Party of England and Wales before the vote to express concern that the proposal conflicted with European Green policy.

European Greens said they now wanted discussions with the British party about its position on Israeli and Jewish self-determination and the implications of the motion for Jewish Green members.

German Green co-leader Felix Banaszak was more explicit, calling the policy “intolerable and unacceptable” and stressing that Israel’s right to exist is widely supported among European Green parties.

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