Zack Polanski’s great mistake was to run away instead of backing unequivocally the statement that Zionism is racism

Martin Shipton

Criticism of Zack Polanski’s leadership of the Green Party has been conflated over the last week with an attack on the undeniable truth of the statement that Zionism is racism.

Before he was elected party leader a little more than a year ago, Polanski was barely known outside London, where he is an Assembly Member. I confess I had never heard of him before he stood for the Green Party leadership, although I was interested to learn that he is a graduate of Aberystwyth University.

Green Party politicians have tended to be cerebral and lacking in charisma. It was therefore perfectly understandable when Polanski’s brand of left-wing populism secured him the party leadership with a hefty proportion of the vote. The election came at a good time for him, with Keir Starmer’s poll ratings falling through the floor and Reform UK on the rise. Many young people in particular saw him as the radical politician who could save Britain from the far right.

It’s also the case that Polanski attracted many disillusioned Labour Party members to the Green Party, particularly when Jeremy Corbyn’s new vehicle, Your Party, flopped after quickly descending into factional warfare.

But the departure of Starmer, for which Polanski can claim some credit, followed by the arrival in 10 Downing Street of Andy Burnham, has halted the Green Party’s rise. Some previously disillusioned Labour supporters have returned to the fold.

Polanski’s decision to stand in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election caused by Starmer’s resignation was a bold one. The seat has always voted Labour and the candidate who was runner-up in 2024 stood as an independent rather than for the Green Party. Paradoxically, if Starmer had still been the Prime Minister and the by-election had been caused by the resignation of another Labour MP, the likelihood is that Polanski would have won.

As it was, the last few days of the by-election campaign were dominated by a row over a motion put to the Green Party’s conference that equated Zionism with racism. To read the hysterical news stories and opinion pieces in the great majority of the mainstream media, one could have been forgiven for believing this was a novel concept. Much of the synthetic outrage came from Zionists, who were never going to accept the motion’s premise. What was shocking was the failure on the part of news outlets to provide historical or political context.

Romanticised view

Older progressives often have a romanticised view of the creation of the state of Israel. The other day I spoke to a Welsh nationalist friend who, as a young person, had seen the kibbutz movement as an admirable example of cooperative socialist principles in action. But as the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe writes in his book Ten Myths About Israel: “[In] the collective memory of many, the golden period of Zionism is associated with the collectivist, egalitarian life embodied in the establishment of the kibbutz. This form of life lasted long after Israel was founded and it attracted young people from all over the world who came to volunteer and experience communism in its purest form. Very few of them realised, or could have known, that most of the kibbutzim were built on destroyed Palestinian villages, whose populations had been expelled in 1948.”

The expulsions and massacres that occurred when Palestinians were deprived of their land are chronicled in great detail by Pappe in another of his books, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. It is an appalling story and shows how the realisation of a “homeland for Jews” – the essence of Zionism – necessitated the removal of the indigenous Arabs and the theft of their land.

Apologists for the Zionist cause try to argue that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is very complicated, but in fact it is very simple. Israel is a state created on stolen land.

In 2022 – the year before the October 7 incursion into Israel by Hamas that led to the deaths of around 1,200 people – Amnesty International published a report called Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.

‘Severe restrictions’

It stated: “Israel denies Palestinian citizens their rights to equal nationality and status, while Palestinians in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] face severe restrictions on freedom of movement. Israel also restricts Palestinians’ rights to family unification in a profoundly discriminatory manner: for example, Palestinians from the OPT cannot gain residency or citizenship through marriage, which Jewish Israelis can.

“Israel also places severe limitations on Palestinians’ civil and political rights, to suppress dissent and maintain the system of oppression and domination. For example, millions of Palestinians in the West Bank remain subject to Israel’s military rule and draconian military orders adopted since 1967.

“These measures have left Palestinians marginalised, impoverished and economically disadvantaged across Israel and the OPT.

“Decades of discriminatory allocation of resources by Israeli authorities, for the benefit of Jewish Israeli citizens in Israel and Israeli settlers in the OPT, compound these inequalities. For example, millions of Palestinians inside of Israel and East Jerusalem live in densely populated areas that are generally underdeveloped and lack adequate essential services such as garbage collection, electricity, public transportation and water and sanitation infrastructure.

“Palestinians across all areas under Israel’s control have fewer opportunities to earn a living and engage in business than Jewish Israelis. They experience discriminatory limitations on access to and use of farmland, water, gas and oil amongst other natural resources, as well as restrictions on the provision of health, education and basic services.

“In addition, Israeli authorities have appropriated the vast majority of Palestinians’ natural resources in the OPT for the economic benefit of Jewish citizens in Israel and in the illegal settlements.

“ … For more than 73 years, Israel has been forcibly displacing entire Palestinian communities. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians’ homes have been demolished, causing terrible trauma and suffering. More than six million Palestinians remain refugees, the vast majority of whom live in refugee camps including outside of Israel/OPT. There are over 100,000 Palestinians in the OPT and another 68,000 inside of Israel at imminent risk of losing their homes, many for the second or third time.

“Palestinians are caught in a Catch-22 situation. Israel requires them to obtain a permit to build or even erect a structure such as a tent, but – unlike Jewish Israeli applicants – rarely issues them a permit. Many Palestinians are forced to build without permits. Israel then demolishes Palestinian homes on the basis that they were built ‘illegally’. Israel uses these discriminatory planning and zoning policies to create unbearable living conditions to force Palestinians to leave their homes to allow for the expansion of Jewish settlement.”

Two-state soloution

All of this is clear evidence that Zionism in practice amounts to racism.

Israel’s leaders have made it clear that they have no intention of allowing a two-state solution, leaving millions of Palestinians the victims of occupation and discrimination indefinitely. With the support of the United States, this misery will continue.

Zack Polanski’s great mistake this week was to run away from his party conference instead of showing leadership by backing unequivocally the statement that Zionism is racism.

---

Get more trusted Welsh news

Choose Nation.Cymru as a preferred source in Google News to see more of our journalism.