Zack Polanski has said he will not accept anyone being excluded from the Green Party “because of the religious or communal body they are part of”, after members adopted a motion declaring Zionism a form of racism.
The Green leader said “no-one will be made unwelcome because of their background, their faith, or where they worship”.
The motion defines Zionism as an ideology supporting “an ethnonationalist Jewish state” and backs a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine”.
He added: “As leader I will not accept any exclusion, or refusal to engage with anyone, because of the religious or communal body they are part of.”
The motion has exposed divisions between the party’s newly enlarged membership base under leader Zack Polanski and its MPs elected at the last general election.
Polanski did not take part in the vote on Sunday and four of the party’s five MPs opposed it.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
Honestly so extremely disappointing from Zack Polanski.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
This is the correct and ethical stance.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
danielquinn@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
How though? You can still accept that Zionism is racism (it is) and make the statements he has here. If the contention is that Zionist == Jew, then that would lead to the exclusion of some people based on religious belief, but as Zionism and Judaism are distinct ideas, nothing he said here is unreasonable. He wouldn’t have to say anything if this dumb motion hadn’t been brought to a vote in the first place.
This motion was toxic af to the entire party and if I didn’t know better I’d think it was designed to be just that. It offers no tangible benefit to the party, nor to anyone on the planet, especially Palestinians who might have benefited from having a party with stated goals of their liberation with some power in the UK. Now we have to spend the next year or so digging into the academic weeds with the public explaining just what Zionism is, why we oppose it, and how the policy is effectively meaningless as it excludes no one, but for some reason a bunch of ideological puritans insisted that this be the thing we’re all talking about. Not climate change, not wealth disparity, and certainly not the plight of the Palestinians.
It’s absolutely absurd how the Left is so hell-bent on destroying itself with purity tests and virtue signalling.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 7 hours ago
On the contrary, this motion is extremely useful for Palestinians because it describes the root cause of their problems.
Furthermore, I’m not sure how many Zionists you think there are in the Green Party, but it’s not that much. Most of the issues you see here are from Labour screaming anti-Semitism.
Let me ask you this, do you actually disagree with the motion or do you think it’s just bad for optics?
Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
He’s an asshole that is purposefully conflating an ethnosupremacist ideology with Jewishness.
ohulancutash@feddit.uk 8 hours ago
Seems to be doing the opposite.