Green Party activists discuss dumping both main definitions of antisemitism

“This is obviously a big problem for both Jewish people who face discrimination, as Jews, as well as Palestinians who are being discriminated against by definitions like this,” she went on, adding: “So we have discussed and resolved to organise and create, along with Jewish Greens and the anti-racism policy working group, a definition that basically is there to describe Jewish hate as Jewish hate.”

Andrée Frieze, the Green councillor for Ham, Petersham and Richmond Riverside and a member of Jewish Greens, was the first to push back against the motion, asking for examples of what voices within the party “have been stopped from making criticism” and rejecting Speitan’s claim that Jewish Greens were on board with the proposal.

Speitan responded by saying she could not go into details of specific cases, but that this problem was “widespread across movements and parties” and a “ticking time bomb. So to prevent that, if we're going to have definitions in place, it must be done in a way that it doesn't discriminate against anyone else or could be used in any way or form to be weaponised against another group of people.”

Craig Simmons of Oxford Greens was next up. He noted that the previous guidance had only been passed by conference four years ago, asked what had changed since then and highlighted the fact that antisemitism was on the rise in the UK.

In response, Speitan claimed that the 17-page guidance referred to “pro-Zionist resources and rabbis, which again, discriminate against the rights of Palestinian people,” declaring that the party needed new guidance to tackle “anti-Jewish hate rather than conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.”

Elise Benjamin, a founding member of Jewish Greens, asked if any of the proposers had attended antisemitism training or educated themselves about what constituted antisemitism, before pointing out that Zack Polanski, the party’s recently elected leader, was one of the authors of the current guidance.

After stating that she was “very well acquainted” with antisemitism and what it meant, Speitan said that she did not understand why Benjamin had characterised the motion as controversial, saying: “I think what’s controversial is the definition itself, the current guidance is the problem.”

Nick Levine of Cambridge and South Cambridge Greens said that as a Jew, he would “feel threatened” if the party removed the current guidance, asking how the party would protect Jews without it.

Speitan suggested that Jewish Greens would be protected in the party by the “Equality Act 2010” stating that there are laws to “protect and provide protection for all religions and groups”.

She added: “I’m a Palestinian and I’m not asking for a definition that is designed to protect my rights over others.

“Personally, if it were myself, I would do away with all definitions because the problem that we are seeing is the creation of a hierarchy of racism, the ‘superioritising’ of one groups of people’s rights over others.”

She went on: “If we are to be truly be a party of equality, and if we are to truly stand for equality of all people equally then we shouldn’t need any definition at all... I don’t feel I even need one as a Muslim to describe anti-Muslim hate.

“If a genocide is not enough to witness racism at is finest, I think the world’s lost.”

The meeting was part of a series of workshops to discuss key motions ahead of their party conference next week, and drew around 50 Green Party members.