Jewish Green Party members could be reported to the party for racism if they belong to a synagogue, under plans to cast Zionism as racism set to be voted on at the party's annual conference this weekend.
Members will debate a contentious motion titled “Zionism is racism”.
A proposed amendment intended to protect Jewish members who attend synagogues and community centres from racism complaints over the Zionist nature of these buildings was rejected.
The motion, which members selected as a top priority for debate, states that Zionism “will be treated as any other form of racism”.
It says the policy will be “implemented by the anti-racism policy working group as appropriate and in accordance with its ordinary practice”.
Given that the vast majority of UK shuls and many Hebrew prayers are Zionist, this could leave members facing racism-related disciplinary proceedings for attending a synagogue.
The JC previously revealed that anti-Israel activists were joining the Green Party in droves to support the motion, which has drawn opposition from longstanding Jewish members.
In a recording reported by The Times, members voted against the proposed protection for practising Jewish members by 67 votes to 24, despite a warning that the motion could result in religious discrimination.
Proposing the amendment, Sam Alston, a Jewish member of the Oxford Greens, said subjecting members to disciplinary proceedings for attending Zionist synagogues would amount to “indirect religious discrimination”.
He said the protection was needed because “the majority of Jewish institutions and the majority of Jews in the UK define themselves as Zionist”.
The Institute for Jewish Policy Research found in 2024 that 65 per cent of British Jews define themselves as Zionist.
Alston said: “This amendment is intended to make absolutely crystal clear that we’re against religious discrimination, direct and indirect, and make absolutely crystal clear, even if we do pass this motion, that the Green Party supports the values of freedom of religion and opposes discrimination.”
He said that when his brother spoke at the start of the meeting, someone had “immediately shouted Zionist”.
“He’s a very publicly anti-Zionist Jew, has been so for a long time, and yet still gets tarred with this brush because of his Judaism,” he said.
Alston added: “The reason we need this amendment is because, if the Green Party members vote down the idea that the synagogue membership should be protected and should be compatible with Green Party identity, it would be a terrible signal to send to Jewish members and I really think we are not going to do that.”
The debate comes after the party’s leader, Zack Polanski, described Zionism as racist during a heated Jewish community hustings in Holborn & St Pancras last week, where he is standing to become an MP.
Polanski – who is Jewish, grew up in a Zionist family and attended a Jewish school in Manchester – had been guarded about his views on the motion, although some in his party had urged him to explicitly disavow Zionism.
Speaking at the hustings, he said: “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.”
His comments drew heckles from the Jewish audience, with gasps when he described himself as “an antizionist”.
He also said that criticism of the term genocide was making Jewish people less sage.
“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.
"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 leader also refused to recognise Israel’s right to exist and did not endorse a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, despite this being official Green Party policy.
A booklet titled Zionism is Racism motion: Why it matters, which explains the reasoning behind the policy, will be handed out at the conference this weekend before the vote.
In it, Lubna Speitan, the author of the motion, writes: “We will continue to hope, resist and rise for liberation. Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!”
The booklet also said Palestinians had an “inalienable right” to use force against the Israeli state to “realise the right to self-determination”.
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