AJEX remembrance day in 2025, November 16 (Image: Justin Grainge)[Missing Credit]
Explaining the decision, Hackney Ajex chairman Martin Sugarman said on Sunday it had been taken “with a very heavy heart and deep regret”.
“We did not want to be associated in any way, or be complicit with the scurrilous Jew hatred of the Greens, or in any way be seen to give them credibility in Hackney,” he said.
Sugarman said the branch had initially attended the usual gathering outside St John’s Church with its standard bearer, as it had done for around 100 years, but deliberately refrained from taking part in the official wreath-laying ceremony.
Instead, the group waited until the main parade had been dismissed and the Green councillors had left before conducting its own tribute at the memorial.
The ten-strong multi-faith gathering comprised Jewish Ajex members and veterans from the Memorable Order of Tin Hats (Moths).
Martin Sugarman speaking at the AJEX's Remembrance event, November 8, 2026 (Credit: Nicole Lampert)[Missing Credit]
In his address, Sugarman recalled the history of Jewish participation in Hackney’s Remembrance ceremonies and paid tribute to Smith, one of six Jewish soldiers to receive the Victoria Cross during the First World War, with a further two Jewish recipients during the Second World War.
He said the veterans continued to remember those who had sacrificed their lives so that future generations could enjoy “freedom and democracy”.
Sugarman expressed concern about the rise in antisemitism, calling on people of goodwill to support the British values of “tolerance and fair play” for which servicemen and women had fought.
But he said the branch had decided against laying its Star of David poppy wreath during the official ceremony because doing so in the presence of Green representatives would give the party legitimacy.
“The Green Party has officially as its policy declared that we Jews and millions of other Zionists, of all faiths and none, including millions of Christians, who support us, are all racists,” he said.
He described the party’s position as a “vicious, racist and antisemitic, anti-Israel slur and insult, and we utterly reject it,” adding that Ajex also rejected the Greens’ move to end Hackney’s twinning arrangement with the Israeli city of Haifa.
Following the departure of the official parade, Sugarman delivered a short address before a Moths member read a prayer for the British Armed Forces in English.
His son Joel, carrying the Ajex standard, then recited the Kaddish in Hebrew, while Sugarman read Psalm 121, beginning “I lift up mine eyes unto the hills”.
He subsequently laid the Ajex wreath and took the salute before the group observed a minute’s silence and dispersed.
