I’ve written here before of my belief that the mask always slips. At some point, people always reveal their true character. Especially, one might add, when the image they seek to project is one of the milk of human kindness and decency.
I merely need to cite the name Jeremy Corbyn to know that you are now nodding in agreement with my assertion.
The latest example of the mask slipping is Zack Polanski, the leader of the Greens. Polanski pushes an image of a man driven by decency, who fights racism and is interested only in what is for the common good. The reality if very different.
Most notably, he leads a party which has gone from being misguided but well-meaning when it was focused on green issues, to one which has taken the Corbynite playbook and transplanted into a different party without even the constraints of the Labour rule book. Specifically, the Greens under Polanski now provide a home not just for Islamists but also for antisemites who were too blatant even for Corbyn’s Labour, such as Tony Greenstein, whom a judge held could honestly be described as a “notorious antisemite” and who has now joined the Greens. In November 2024 Greenstein was charged with a terrorism offence and accused of supporting Hamas. His trial is due later this year.
It is not just that the Greens welcome notorious antisemites as members; they use antisemitism as a political tool. On Saturday, for example, they were due to vote on a motion holding that “Zionism is racism”, barring “Zionists” from membership.
The use of the word "Zionist” fools no one. Given that all but a tiny proportion of Jews believe in the right of Israel to exist, the motion would have barred almost all Jews from membership – except, of course, Polanski, who has now decided that he is no longer a Zionist. The vote didn’t happen because the online event descended into chaos. But it will return, not least because of the number of Jew haters now active within the party. The Telegraph has revealed a series of WhatsApp messages among members of the Greens for Palestine group. In one, Jews are called “an abomination to this planet”. Another said Jews “murder, bomb and starve” children, while a third said that last week’s arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances was a “false flag” operation carried out by Jews. Another expressed support for Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, an NHS doctor who was arrested last week, having been suspended last November over antisemitic comments: “No, she is going to call out the people who have destroyed her and her family. They were Jews and we shouldn’t be afraid to say it. They were Jewish supremacists.”
Another member agreed: “Yes. Take back the narrative and the true meaning of the terms, particularly zionism and semite.”
As for Polanski’s antizionism: it is merely the latest example of his political grift. Even as recently as 2018, after he had dumped his LibDem principles for a new set as a Green, he still portrayed himself as a champion of the fight against antisemitism and obsessive criticism of Israel. Speaking to Kingston Green Radio, he criticised the then co-leaders of the Greens, Siân Berry and Jonathan Bartley, for refusing to give enough time for a motion adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which Polanski was pushing, adding: “I think in the future it would be absolutely shameful and incoherent not to have a policy on antisemitism.” And he said that the party’s then anti-Israel stance “feels a bit obsessive at times.”
It is not just journalists and opponents who are struck by Polanski’s volte face on Israel and antisemitism, which – entirely by chance, of course – propelled him to the party leadership and has fuelled the party’s success at attracting support from antisemites, Islamists and other obsessive Israel critics. His new stance has struck his family, too.
On Saturday, the Daily Mail ran a piece in which three members of his Jewish family spoke about their relative. “He’s currently the leader of the future Islamic party of Britain, that’s what the Green Party is fast becoming. And there would be no place for Jews in an Islamic state of Britain” said one of them. The paper went on: “The only member of the Greens leader’s family still speaking to him was his mother, Ava, relatives said. She is said to tell the wider family that while she does not agree with his politics, she loves him as her son and is proud of what he’s achieved.
“If the Zionism-is-racism motion is passed it will make the Greens the most antisemitic party in British history since Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists," said a second relation. “The idea of it is one of the most sickening things I’ve heard in a long time.” A third family member said: “The mad thing is that he’s gay, he’s Jewish but he’s cosying up to people whose ideology is the complete antithesis of everything that he’s supposed to stand for. It’s like he’s a chicken, telling us to vote for KFC.”
Given the ferocity of his and his party’s attacks on Israel and its embrace of antisemites, it is very much in the public interest – and of obvious relevance – for the Mail to have published the views of Polanski’s Jewish family about his political stances. Especially as the Green leader uses his status as a Jew to seek to swat away all criticism of those stances. As he posted yesterday: “For whoever needs to hear this I'm the only Jewish person to lead a political party – third largest in the country. The Daily Mail have been & always will be my enemy – they historically supported fascists & continue to do so. I'll take no lectures from them on Antisemitism.”
His argument that being Jewish means he and his party cannot be criticised over antisemitism is risible. Does he also believe that because the Conservatives are led by a black woman they should consequently be immune from questions over racism and misogyny, or that because Reform’s chair is a Muslim that party should be immune from questions about its stance on prejudice against Muslims? Even to posit this is to show how ludicrous an argument it is. And yet Polanski pretends that his Jewish identity means he and the Greens are immune from such questions.
Polanski is merely the latest in a long historical line of Jews who have provided cover to antisemites. For the Jew haters and Islamists, the usefulness of having a court Jew who can deflect criticism outweighs the stench of being involved with a Jew – so long as the Jew is willing to use his status to attack other Jews over their beliefs. What Polanski will eventually find is what all his predecessors in that role have found: they will turn on him when for them the fact of his Jewishness outweighs his usefulness as a turncoat Jew.
But it was with another social media post that Polanski’s mask truly slipped. The journalist who wrote the Mail piece was Nicole Lampert, a familiar name to JC readers. Polanski’s response was, even for a man of his lack of even basic principles, astonishing: “Daily Mail and journalist? Those words don't belong together with your parasitic behaviour.”
Yes, the Jewish leader of the Green Party used a classic antisemitic trope, describing Lampert as “parasitic” – a word used repeatedly by Hitler and the Nazis to describe Jews. I find it inconceivable – literally, impossible to believe – that Polanski did not know this. Which means that in my view he deliberately used one of the most disgusting antisemitic concepts – the Jew as a parasite on the world – to dismiss a piece of reporting which was both important and entirely proper.
As I said, the mask always slips. If anyone was in any doubt about the true character of Zack Polanski, they are no longer.
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