Zionism is Racism – Conference Motion
I've had a lot of correspondence about the party conference “Zionism is Racism” motion, much of it from Jewish constituents and party members who are worried about what it signals.
I've listened carefully, and I want to set out where I'm at.
First, anti-Jewish racism is real, rising, and incompatible with everything the Green Party stands for. Criticism of Israel's documented conduct must never become hostility towards Jews as people. I hold both commitments without hesitation, and if I ever fall short of that, I expect to be told.
The case for the motion is about conduct, not definitions. The UN Commission of Inquiry found in September 2025 that Israeli authorities have committed and continue to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. This is on top of earlier findings of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Settlement expansion in the occupied territories has continued through every peace process since Madrid under frameworks that have never constrained the strongest party. Those are documented findings, not rhetoric.
And before anyone claims the Greens have become extreme: the formal position that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination was UN General Assembly policy from 1975 until 1991, when Israel demanded its removal as a condition of attending the Madrid conference. The United States used its weight to push through the revocation.
What followed is well documented. Peace negotiation after peace negotiation collapsed, yet settlement expansion continued. A pattern that repeats, time after time.
Now the ground is shifting anyway. The most recent Pew survey shows majorities on both sides, 56% in Israel and 68% in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, see no way for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist.
In the United States, half of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 back a bi-national state, according to polling by the Jewish Voter Resource Center.
The two-state consensus is dissolving from both ends.
The motion was democratically arrived at, and I took it seriously enough to feed my input in earlier this year. As a Green Party ward councillor, I consider it my job to represent policy our members have decided.
On the doorstep, I don't get many questions about foreign policy, but I've learned plenty from the ones that arrive in my inbox. People do hold deep attachment to Israel and horror at its government's conduct at the same time. My job is to hold the government to account without dismissing the attachment.
So, I don't think restoration of the UN position is as radical as it's being made out to be in mainstream media.
I think this policy position opens the way to a fresh approach to peace: equal democratic rights for everyone, with equal commitment to fighting anti-Palestinian racism and anti-Jewish racism alike.
If you think I've got this balance wrong, I'd genuinely like to hear from you.