The Haringey Green Group (Haringey Gov)[Missing Credit]
Relations between Jewish communities and Green-run councils and councillors have come under scrutiny following the passing of the “Zionism is racism” motion at the Green Party conference last weekend.
The motion means it is now Green Party policy to call for a single Palestinian state by “all available means” and that the party has classified the belief in Jewish self-determination as a racist ideology. The vote, which passed by 1,022 votes to 813, saw members reject a “Jewish safeguarding” amendment meant to protect Green Jews who attend Zionist synagogues.
Jewish leaders and senior politicians branded the motion “racist” and “antisemitic” and there are calls for the party to be investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
In the strongly worded letter, the Highgate United Synagogue leaders questioned how Jewish residents could now feel safe in a borough governed by the Greens.
“How can we as Jews feel safe when the largest party of the borough we live in, entirely peacefully up to now, publicly align yourself with the most virulent Jew-hating racists of all, Hamas and the Nazis,” the shul leaders wrote.
Blake, who represents the Tottenham Central ward and was elected council leader after the Greens took control of Haringey Council as a minority administration in May’s local elections, said that while he agreed with the motion’s “core principles”, saying “no state should be established on the idea that one religion is superior to another”, he did not support it overall.
Councillor Mark Blake, leading of Haringey Council[Missing Credit]
“The political ideology behind the displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people is clearly racist,” he said.
But he added that he did not “feel comfortable” with the party deciding on a solution to the conflict and it was “unhelpful to focus on an ideological debate on definitions”.
Haringey Labour condemned the Green motion as “deeply concerning”.
The shul leaders went further, accusing the Green group on the council of “aligning itself with Hamas, a genocidal, homophobic and misogynistic Islamist terrorist organisation not only responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, but countless murders and torture of its own people.”
Highlighting the enormous financial and physical security burden faced by Jewish communities, including the need for stab vests, terrorism-proof fences and professional and volunteer security personnel, the shul leaders blamed “you and your comrades' obsessive and ignorantly one-sided view of one of the world's most intractable conflicts and your determination to bring that obsession into every facet of life here in Britain.”
They stressed the personal toll of Hamas’s October 7 massacre on their congregation.
“Members of our synagogue have close relatives and friends who perished in that pogrom,” they said, highlighting the community’s support for British-Israeli former hostage Emily Damari, whom the synagogue had “adopted” while she was held in Hamas captivity.
In May last year, 400 people packed into the shul to welcome Damari following her release.
Emily was welcomed by Highgate Synagogue in May 2025[Missing Credit]
“Our synagogue along with the majority of British synagogues recites weekly Sabbath prayers for both the Royal Family of the United Kingdom and the State of Israel and will continue to do so, irrespective of what you or other Green Party members think.
“Love of Zion and a hope to be able to return to live in our ancestral homeland is integral to all streams of Judaism, as, it so happens, stewardship of nature and respect for all life. During the appalling Middle Eastern war, we prayed every week for an end to hostilities and an end to all suffering, of Palestinians as well as Jews and for a full and lasting peace.”
The leaders also highlighted a “packed” event at the shul featuring Palestinian campaigner Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib, who lost more than 30 members of his family in Gaza.
Referring to Al-Khatib, they wrote: “he believes... those keffiyeh wearing sympathisers in the West who cheer for Hamas are doing more harm than good.”
They told Blake they understood he was “deeply embarrassed with the decision taken by your party to not only brand Zionism as racism but to call for the eradication by means necessary including violence, of the only Jewish state,” but they urged him to “publically resile” himself from the motion.
The JC approached Blake for comment.
