Greens 4 Palestine, the activist group campaigning against Zionism, is now calling on people to join the party, register for conference next month and vote to make the view that “Zionism is racism” part of party policy.
An initial version of the motion was not heard at the party’s spring conference because of technical difficulties.
The debate in October will now follow a change in position by Jewish Greens, an official faction within the party, which initially opposed the motion and urged Greens to vote against it.
Jewish Greens has since faced allegations of a “takeover” by antizionists, and the faction issued an interim “statement of neutrality”, saying its members held a range of views on the motion.
The new statement acknowledges that “some members” believe the motion “would risk the party discriminating against Jews”, while notes that other Jewish Greens “support the motion in its entirety”.
Green Party membership has almost quadrupled since Polanski became leader, while Jewish Greens has doubled in size since January.
The decision to debate "Zionism is racism” comes as the party lifts the suspension of Croydon councillor Mark Adderley, husband of former Loose Women panellist Nadia Sawalha.
The JC previously revealed that Adderley, a staunch opponent of Israel, had ranted in social media videos about “the chosen people” and suggested Benjamin Netanyahu was to blame for the Hatzola ambulance attack.
He was suspended by the party in April.
In a video on Thursday announcing his readmission, Adderley said he had been “smeared and targeted by the mainstream media in this country” and by politicians “calling me a racist, calling me an antisemite”.
“I have and always will be fiercely critical of the state of Israel and its genocide against the Palestinians,” he added.
He claimed Green Party procedure had been broken, asking: “Was it fear? Was it pressure? Was it some group or someone inside the Green Party?”
Adderley described the period as “stressful, challenging [and] mentally distressing.”
Mark Adderley said his suspension from the Green Party has been lifted (YouTube)[Missing Credit]
In a separate video, Sawalha, who was dropped from ITV’s Loose Women earlier this year, said the period had been a “nightmare”.
In the tearful video, she said: “Within weeks of Mark putting himself up, having been asked to run as a councillor for Croydon, he was suspended, and suspended with a charge sheet that was lifted from The Times and horrible, horrible posts from a horrible MP, our local MP, Steve Reed, and that’s what got Mark suspended.”
She said the party did not “have any understanding of the strength of feeling and the upset... nobody’s mental health is OK”.
Meanwhile Polanski has been selected as the parliamentary candidate to challenge Labour in the Holborn and St Pancras seat vacated by Sir Keir Starmer. The Greens have started a campaign against Labour focusing on Israel.
The by-election is due to be held on October 8, four days after the “Zionism is racism” motion will be heard on the Sunday of Green Party conference.
