Zack Polanski refused to say whether he supported Israel’s right to exist – or even a two-state solution – and declared himself an antizionist at a Jewish community hustings ahead of the Holborn and St Pancras by-election on October 8.
The Green Party leader also backed the view that Zionism was “racism”, drawing gasps when he declined to recognise Israel’s right to exist and boos when he described the war in Gaza as a genocide.
He added that describing the “genocide” charge as antisemitic was making Jews less safe.
Asked in the first audience question, “yes or no – are you a Zionist?”, Polanski replied: “I am an antizionist,” acknowledging that this might be “difficult for people in this room to hear”.
It is believed to be the first time Polanski, who grew up in a Zionist household, has explicitly described himself that way, having previously used the more neutral phrase, “non-Zionist”.
Pressed on Israel’s right to exist, he said: “Countries have always been ideas, and ideas change over time.”
But he said that Britain imposing its idea about what the future looks like for Israelis and Palestinians would be “pretty imperial”, adding, “I do think it is our job to uphold international law in the same way that we do with Russia.”
He drew heckles when responding to a question about whether Zionism was racism, an apparent reference to a controversial motion set to be debated at the Green Party conference next month.
All of other the candidates agreed it was not racist except Polanski, who said, “the problem with definitions is they mean different things to different people”. He went on to say that he believed Zionism now refers to “the displacement and genocide of Palestinians”, which is racist, drawing further boos.
The Liberal Democrats’ Patrick Stillman, the Conservatives’ Ewan Cameron and Reform’s Peter Newman all said they were Zionists. Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali, the favourite to win, said: “I believe in a two-state solution.”
Like Polanski, Newman did not endorse a two-state solution, arguing that British politicians suggesting as much was to “interfere in the domestic affairs” of Israel.
Asked by chair Amanda Bowman, co-leader of the London Jewish Forum, how he would confront antisemitism, Polanski said he had experienced Jew-hatred himself, with people arrested “in relation to antisemitic attacks towards me”.
“Where I may part company with some people in this room,” he continued, “I think we need to separate antisemitism from criticism of the Israeli state. And I think far too often those things become conflated.”
Pressed by Bowman about the actions of some in his party, he said criticism of “apartheid and genocide” was wrongly being classified as antisemitic.
This drew boos, hisses and calls of “not true” and “prove it”, as many in the room objected to his description of Israel’s actions as genocide – although one audience member could be heard agreeing.
“Calling it that [a genocide] is not antisemitic,” Polanski insisted, as audience members responded: “It is.”
There was a smattering of applause when he added: “We cannot hold Jewish people responsible for what happens in Israel, and when we conflate those things that’s when the danger happens.”
Cameron said politicians should “have to be accountable” for their language, criticising “explosive words” such as genocide and apartheid without the context of Hamas and the October 7 massacre.
Abdi-Wali said she had stood with Sir Keir Starmer as he tackled antisemitism in Labour. “The Jewish community in Camden is the Camden story,” she said, adding that learning about the Holocaust had had a “profound” impact on her.
Local resident and former JC columnist Hadley Freeman challenged Polanski over his remarks about a “perception” of Jewish unsafety following the antisemitic arson attack on Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green.
The Green leader said this had been “misreported” by the media: “I was very clear when I said that whether someone is actually scared or they're worried about their safety, neither are acceptable.”
Despite the disagreements in the room, he claimed Jews regularly stopped him in the street to say: “I'm pleased that there's a Jewish person in public life who is representing what I care for.”
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Freeman also asked Polanski if he could enlarge her breasts, a nod to his previous career as a hypnotherapist who once told a woman that mind visualisation could increase breast size. He did not respond to that part of her question.
All candidates backed the proscription of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including Polanski, who said “the government did the right thing” on the ban.
But the Green leader said the ban on Palestine Action was an “overreach” which he would reverse if in power.
“There is such a strong Jewish tradition of people challenging suppression, challenging oppression of peoples,” he said.
Newman said Britain was too slow to proscribe terrorist organisations. “It wasn’t too long ago the Labour Party considered Hamas their friends”, he added in an apparent reference to Jeremy Corbyn’s time in the party and his description of the group as “friends” before they were proscribed.
Abdi-Wali reminded the audience that it had been a “Labour government that proscribed the IRGC”.
Beyond Israel and antisemitism, candidates set out some of their plans for housing, policing and the cost of living.
Polanski repeatedly invoked his Jewish identity during the evening at the Montagu Centre, the headquarters of Liberal Judaism, recalling in his opening remarks that he first visited the Fitzrovia building for a Jewish Extinction Rebellion event, just weeks before ending up in a police cell.
He had been arrested after leading chants on Waterloo Bridge and spent several hours in custody before being released without charge.
“I am hopeful that’s not going to happen again tonight,” he said, linking his environmental politics to tikkun olam, the Hebrew phrase widely translated as “healing the world”.
Urging respectful disagreement, he told the audience: “When I had [my] barmitzvah, I was taught about mensch behaviour.”
He advocated rent freezes and suggested that a Green MP in Camden would hold the Labour government to account and stop it drilling for oil in the North Sea.
Recognising in her opening speech the “strength of feeling that the conflict in Palestine and Israel has brought to communities here”, Abdi-Wali, a Camden Square councillor, said she wanted to “bring a sense of hope to Parliament”.
She cited the £650 million she secured for council housing as Camden Council leader and pledged to work with the prime minister to “eradicate rough sleeping” and “stand up to Thames Water”.
Cameron, who bought his first home in Camden Town and sent his sons to Primrose Hill Primary School, said Labour had “taken advantage” of the constituency for “far too long” and urged the audience to vote Conservative.
Newman, a police officer of 31 years, criticised the closure of 24-hour police stations and called for more officers on patrol and outside synagogues. He said Reform would stand up for the Jewish community.
Stillman, a West Hampstead councillor, said his party would always defend religious freedom as a “core liberal value”.
All candidates defended the right to kosher and halal slaughter and circumcision.
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