The Green party of England and Wales voted Sunday to adopt a policy equating Zionism with racism and calling for Israel's replacement by a single Palestinian state. The motion, put forward by internal group Greens for Palestine, passed 1,022 votes to 813. Four of the party's five MPs opposed it. The head of the Jewish Greens, Vivien Lichtenstein, is now considering leaving the party, and a legal challenge under equalities legislation is likely. The structural story here is not about the Middle East. It is about how a small, issue-driven faction can capture a party's policy apparatus when leadership is absent and membership rules are porous. Greens for Palestine openly encouraged people to join the party to support this single issue. Longstanding members told the Guardian they believe relatively new members drove the vote. Party leader Zack Polanski — himself Jewish — missed the debate entirely, campaigning instead in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection for Keir Starmer's former seat. The motion declares Zionism racist because it "privileges one ethnic group on the basis of the subjugation of others" and frames Israel as a European settler-colonial project. Its sponsors insist it targets a political ideology, not Jewish identity. But nearly two-thirds of British Jews identify as Zionist according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, and as columnist Jonathan Freedland argues, the term encompasses everything from socialist Zionism to religious Zionism to cultural Zionism. The motion functionally labels most British Jews as adherents of a racist ideology, whether or not that was the drafters' intent. The immediate fallout is significant. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis called it "poisonous antisemitism." Israel barred Polanski from entering the country. The European Green parties group expressed dismay, noting the motion contradicts their support for a two-state solution. Barrister Adam Wagner KC, who led the successful equalities case against Corbyn-era Labour, told the Guardian a similar legal challenge against the Greens would have a good chance of success. A proposed "safeguarding" amendment — which would have reassured members they wouldn't face discipline for belonging to Jewish organisations with Zionist affiliations, including synagogues — failed to pass. This is now a genuine fear among Jewish members, according to the Guardian's Peter Walker. The party has created a policy environment where membership in a synagogue could theoretically become grounds for internal action. Former co-leader Carla Denyer captured the strategic frustration: elected Greens will now spend their energy defending definitions rather than pursuing material action on Palestine. The motion generates no new pressure on the Israeli government, creates no humanitarian corridor, funds no aid. It produces only internal conflict, legal liability, and a gift to critics who want to paint pro-Palestinian politics as antisemitic. The deeper pattern is familiar from Labour's Corbyn era: a party with genuine moral energy on Palestine allows that energy to be channeled into ideological purity tests rather than actionable policy. The beneficiaries are the entryists who get their motion passed, the party's opponents who get ammunition, and the Israeli right wing, which gets to frame all criticism as extremism. The losers are Palestinians, Jewish party members, and the Greens' credibility as a governing-ready force.
