Green Party leader Zack Polanski grilled over deputy Mothin Ali’s inflammatory October 7 comments

However, Polanski was then challenged about whether his deputy leader Mothin Ali was “the right person to be the deputy leader of a political party”.

Ali, a councillor in Leeds, wrote on October 7 in a since-deleted social media post: "White supremacist European settler colonialism must end!"

Webb also raised the role Ali played in agitating against Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, a Jewish university chaplain in Leeds.

Deutsch and his family were forced into hiding after pro-Palestine activists discovered that he had returned to Israel for reserve duties with the IDF.

Ali said in a since-deleted video: “This is Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch. This creep, that’s the only way I can describe him politely, is someone who went from Leeds to Israel to kill children and women and everyone else over there.”

He subsequently said he was “sorry for any upset my comments caused about the Gaza conflict” but Deutsch hit out at Ali’s role, accusing him of helping to incite division against him.

Polanski reiterated Ali’s apology, saying: “I think the key words there are that he’s apologised and that he stands by that apology”.

Challenged by Webb as to whether the apology was sufficient, the Green leader turned to what he described as a “genocide” in Gaza: “I’m a Jewish person and I feel this genocide incredibly deeply. As a Muslim man I can only imagine what it feels like to know that every single day the equivalent of a classroom of children are dying.”

Without defending his deputy’s comments, Polanski suggested there was a wider “context” to them.

“This rabbi went off to fight for the IDF, he was actively recruiting for people to engage in a genocide”, he said, before being challenged again by the Webb, who noted: “his young family had to move out of their home because of things the now deputy leader of the Greens said … you’re saying there is a context to that.”

Polanski retorted: “There is a context to this. I think if someone goes to fight with an army that’s committing a genocide then there are consequences. I don’t stand by what Mothin said and neither does he”.

Webb also brought up Bristol councillor Abdul Malik, who shared a Hamas video in which a spokesman for the terror group described the October 7 massacre as a “supremely defensive act” that “targeted only Israeli military bases and compounds”, and said that Israel was an “an animal state … a cancer that should be eradicated”.

He avoided any sanction from the party and initially claimed that he had not shared the video despite screenshots from his Facebook profile indicating otherwise. He later admitted that he did, in fact, share the video.

In February, Malik, who is also a magistrate, was reprimanded by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office.

The legal watchdog went on to say that Malik’s “actions had a detrimental effect upon the dignity, standing and good reputation of the magistracy”.

In his representations, Malik said that he agreed the post was offensive, that he did not support Hamas, claiming to have been critical of the terror group in his capacity as chair of a local mosque, and that he removed the post as soon as he became aware of it.

Although the party has consistently defended Malik in the face of criticism, Polanski told Webb he wasn’t aware of the specific details.

“I don’t know about this instance, but what I will say that as a Jewish man I’m very upset and very bothered about what’s happening in Palestine”, he said.

Webb later questioned whether Polanski was holding others to a higher standard than he was expecting of officials in his own party.

Polanski called for the resignation of Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley after a BBC documentary showed that officers at Charing Cross Police Station had made offensive comments about women and Muslims.

Quizzed by Webb over this apparent inconsistency, Polanski said: “Mark Rowley said that the Metropolitan Police weren’t institutionally racist and misogynistic at the same time as there was hidden camera footage of people being misogynistic and racist. I think it is quite obvious why the Met Commissioner needs to resign.”