Zack Polanski had expressed doubts about the “Zionism is racism” slogan so beloved of his fellow Greens, but yes, he’s finally capitulated. Of course he has.
At a hustings event at a synagogue in the constituency hosted by the London Jewish Forum and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Polanski, who is Jewish, was asked what his party would do to confront antisemitism.
He replied: “Far too often, criticism of the Israeli government and the occupation, what I would call apartheid and genocide … many genocide scholars recognise it as a genocide [and] calling it that is not antisemitic. I think, as a Jewish community, we need to come together to recognise that when we call that antisemitic, we are making ourselves as Jewish people less safe.”
The Green Party faced sustained criticism this year after a number of its local election candidates were suspended for antisemitic statements and social media posts.
It is also facing a vote on a controversial motion to declare Zionism, the movement that led to the creation of Israel as a Jewish state, as a form of racism in official Green policy in Brighton next weekend. The motion was top of the priority list for a vote at the conference in October, which has to take place before it can be officially adopted.
Polanski had been reserved about his views but has faced a backlash from some members of his party for failing to take a position. At the hustings event, Polanski said: “I am an anti-Zionist, which I know is difficult for people to hear in this room, but it’s the truth.
“I think countries have always been ideas and I think things change over time. And again I don’t think it is down to our country to decide what the future for Israelis and Palestinians will look like.” When asked his views on the motion, Polanski said he believed Zionism was racism because “in practice” it acts as “displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people”.
He added: “I think the problem with definitions is they mean different things to different people. If you’re defining Zionism as the displacement and genocide of the Palestinians, which is how in practice Zionism has become in truth, then that is racist.”
Zionism is simply the belief that Jews should have a country in their ancestral home. The bitter irony here is that Israel has a 20% Arab population, while all the surrounding Arab countries – from Morocco to Syria, Yemen to Egypt – have ethnically cleansed themselves of their Jews. Some 800,000, there for thousands of years, were driven out by violence and pogroms, and the world says nothing about it. And now, helped by useful idiots and grifters like Zack Polanski, the Arabs want to finish the job and get rid of all the Jews in the Middle East.
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