On Sunday, the Green Party moved beyond extreme criticism of Israel to rejecting the country’s very existence. By declaring that “Zionism is racism”, it placed a core part of the identity of most British Jews beyond the pale – encompassing even advocacy of a two-state solution – and, with it, the Jews who hold those views.
Earlier, an amendment designed to protect Jewish members from disciplinary action merely for worshipping at or associating with synagogues and other Jewish institutions that support Israel was rejected as unnecessary.
If it was unnecessary, there was no reason not to pass it; its rejection may therefore reveal who the real target of the new policy is.
The rhetoric surrounding the motion only adds to the concerns. Lubna Speitan, the author of the conference motion, has spoken of a future in which “we dismantle Zionism… from every country” – which logically includes Britain – and Zionists are “hunted in the same way as the Nazi oppressors were”.
Whatever distinction she may claim to draw between Zionists and Jews, such language places a party that tolerates it clearly beyond normal democratic cooperation.
The response from the rest of democratic politics should therefore be clear: there must be an AfD-style firewall around the Green Party, of the kind that exists in Germany against the far-right party.
That means no formal coalition, no ministerial arrangement, no governing pact and no agreement under which another party depends on Green support in order to take or retain power.
A party that places itself outside the democratic norm by targeting a community already facing murderous violence cannot be treated as an ordinary partner in government.
The issue is no longer simply what the Greens believe about Israel, but whether mainstream parties are prepared to confer legitimacy and power on a movement that has chosen to stigmatise British Jews in this way.
At a time of an explosion in antisemitism, including violent antisemitism, this is not an abstract ideological position about a distant conflict but one that bears directly on the safety, belonging and public legitimacy of Jews here in Britain.
If even longstanding Greens, including the chair of Amnesty International UK, have resigned in disgust at this motion, it is inconceivable that other democratic parties should contemplate entering, or continuing, formal governing arrangements with such a party.
More than a dozen Labour MPs have now referred the Greens to Sussex Police and the Equality and Human Rights Commission; those investigations should proceed, but the political response cannot wait upon their conclusion.
Nor can the firewall stop at Westminster – it must apply at local level too. Birmingham is therefore an immediate test, since the city is governed by a partnership in which a Liberal Democrat serves as leader and a Green as deputy.
There can be no cop-out whereby the Liberal Democrats criticise or distance themselves from the Green motion while continuing the coalition regardless.
This is not a minor policy disagreement but a categorical divide between mainstream democratic politics and extremism. Unless the Liberal Democrats are prepared to lend legitimacy to a motion that targets British Jews, that places ordinary Jewish communal life under suspicion, that arrangement should now end.
But the firewall cannot face only outwards. The Green resolution is only the most extreme consequence yet of a wider political culture in which Israel is no longer merely criticised but falsely portrayed as uniquely wicked and accused, without evidence, of exceptional crimes.
Labour, the Liberal Democrats and others should recognise where such hyperbolic rhetoric within their own ranks can lead.
Britain’s political obsession with Israel will do little to determine events in the Middle East, but it has far more immediate and dangerous effects on the increasingly hostile atmosphere in which British Jews live.
The Green Party has made its choice – the rest of democratic politics must now make theirs.
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