Questions and answers

On 4 October 2026 the Green Party of England and Wales voted to declare that "Zionism is racism".

Zionism is simply the belief that Jewish people, like the French, the Irish or the Palestinians, have the right to a homeland of their own. Is that racist? No.

Green councillors now face a choice about their political future.

Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to live as a nation in the Jewish homeland, where Jews have lived continuously for approximately 4,000 years.

That is not racism. It is national self-determination, the same right every other people claims in its historic homeland. French people have the right to a homeland in France. Is that racist? No. Simple.

You can fiercely criticise any Israeli government and still be a Zionist, just as you can criticise the French government while believing France is the homeland of the French. Neither is racist.

Racism is treating people worse because of their race, ethnicity or national origin, or holding one group to a standard that is applied to no one else.

UK law recognises Jewish people as an ethnic group protected by the Equality Act 2010.

There are nearly 200 countries. Dozens have a majority religion and 43 have an official one. Israel was founded by a United Nations resolution and admitted to the UN in 1949; many countries have far less to show for their founding. Nobody calls any of them racist for existing.

If believing in a Jewish homeland is racist, then believing in a Palestinian homeland is racist too. Nobody says that. Only Jews are told it.

Picking out Jews, and only Jews, for a rule applied to no one else is racism. That is what the motion does. The United Nations said "Zionism is racism" in 1975 and took it back in 1991. The Green Party has brought it back.

Zionism is not racism. By singling out the Jews, the Greens have become racist.

The Jews had no mother country

Colonialism is a mother country planting settlers abroad. The Jews had none. Conquered and expelled from Judea by Rome, ruled there by one empire after another, persecuted wherever they were scattered, they came back to the land where they became a people and have lived for approximately 4,000 years. Half of Israel's Jews descend from the 850,000 driven out of Arab and Muslim countries after 1948. Nobody sent them. Nowhere else would have them.

"Settler colony" means "should not exist"

Israel was created by United Nations resolution 181 in 1947 and has been a member of the UN since 1949. Dozens of states were drawn in the same decade. Only this one is called a colony to be undone. One in five Israelis is Arab, votes, and sits in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. Criticise any Israeli government, as Israelis do. Denying the state is different: it denies Jews what every other people has.

Israel has a right to exist

Nearly half the world's Jews live there. "No right to exist" means "no right to a country": stateless again, as in the 1930s, when the doors of the world were shut.

What Greens For Palestine is saying

The motion commits the party to "a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine". That is Israel's abolition. Greens For Palestine says it plainly:

It's time to build an Anti-Zionist Green Party

The settler colony in occupied Palestine ... the Western world's only major Anti-Zionist party

That is not a view about Israeli policy. It is a view about whether Jews may have a country at all.

SourcesThe map and the call to build an anti-Zionist party, 3 July 2026 The statement of 6 October 2026

The Equality Act 2010 protects people from discrimination, harassment and victimisation because of race, religion or belief. Jews are protected as an ethnic group, and Zionism, as a belief held by most British Jews, is capable of protection as a philosophical belief.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission's 2020 guidance for political parties is plain: a party must not discriminate against, harass or victimise its members, associates, guests or those seeking membership because of a protected characteristic, including race, religion and belief. A party that declares the core belief of most British Jews to be racism, and treats those who hold it as racists, contravenes the Equality Act and the Commission's guidance. The motion is not only wrong. It is unlawful.

The motion, A105, is not a one-line slogan. It declares the Green Party "an anti-Zionist party". It supports "a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine", which means no Israel, and so rejects the two-state solution backed by the United Nations, the UK, the EU, the Arab League and the Palestinian Authority. It affirms Palestinian "struggle ... by all available means", and its own briefing paper spells that out as "including armed struggle". It calls Marwan Barghouti, convicted of five murders, merely a "prisoner of conscience". And it calls for Palestine Action to be taken off the terrorism list. The Greens support proscribed terrorists.

Then it turns inward. Zionism is to be "treated as any other form of racism". So, anyone who believes Israel should exist is to be handled as a racist.

Every clause is quoted, with our response, at zionismisnotracism.co.uk/the-motion.

174 countries have a majority religion and 43 have an official state religion. None of them is told it has no right to exist. Israel, the one Jewish state, is the only country whose existence the Green Party has declared racist.

Jews have lived continuously in the land of Israel for approximately 4,000 years. Zionism is the belief that they have the same right to self-determination there as every other people has in its own homeland.

Ask them to choose. One polite email to a dozen Green councillors, with Green Party head office in copy, asking each councillor to join the four Green MPs in speaking out against Motion A105, to call publicly for it to be reversed or to resign, and to say which on the record. It takes two minutes, it goes from your own email, and every one is counted. Then share this page so others can do the same. Pressing "Ask them to choose" prepares the email in your own email app, with a handful of Green councillors and local parties, with the party's leadership in copy, already filled in. Nothing is sent until you press send.

A Green councillor can say two things on the record here, in a minute and with no password: that Zionism is not racism, and that the party got Motion A105 wrong. Sign in with your council email address. The pledge says: I do not support Motion A105. Zionism is not racism. Zionism is not a term that can be redefined to suit a position. Zionism is simply the belief that Jewish people, like the French, the Irish or the Palestinians, have the right to a homeland of their own. Is that racist? No. I will treat antisemitism as racism. I will report it through the same channels as any other racism. I will represent Jewish residents of my ward as fully as anyone else. A councillor need not agree with every line: ticking one is enough to sign, and both make the full pledge. Each councillor then records whether they intend to stay in the party to fight the motion or to resign from it due to the motion. The names are listed at zionismisnotracism.co.uk/pledge, and four of the party's five MPs have publicly rejected the motion.

Lubna Speitan, a Green Party member who joined within the past year from Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana's 'Your Party'. On 6 October 2026 The Telegraph reported that 2015 court documents described her as a "close friend" of Minh Quang Pham, the al-Qaeda member who admitted planning to bomb the Heathrow arrivals hall, and that she offered to testify in his defence. Asked whether they were still friends, she told the paper: "Yes, it's still the case." The full account, with its source, is at zionismisnotracism.co.uk/the-motion#proposer.

The Green Party of England and Wales passed the motion declaring that "Zionism is racism" on 4 October 2026. This campaign asks the party to repeal it.

People who email the Green Party about Motion A105 have been getting the same reply. The reply does not say that Zionism is not racism. It does not say the motion is wrong. It does not dispute a line of it. It does not say it will be reversed.

They say: "The motion is a statement of the Party's position, it doesn't make any changes to our code of conduct or our guidance on antisemitism." It changes both. The motion says so. Page 6 of the motion: "Zionism, as defined above, will be treated as any other form of racism, and this motion will be implemented by the Anti-Racism Policy Working Group as appropriate and in accordance with its ordinary practice." That is an instruction to the party's anti-racism machinery, not a statement of opinion. Racism already breaks the party's code of conduct. A motion that declares a new form of racism changes what the code catches, whether or not a word of the code is rewritten. The same motion rejects the IHRA and JDA definitions of antisemitism as "weaponised" (page 4). Those are the definitions used by the UK government, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. A party that drops every accepted definition of antisemitism has changed its guidance on antisemitism.

They say: "Anything that didn't break the code of conduct on Saturday, still [does] not break the code of conduct today. Members won't be discriminated against or disciplined because of their beliefs, including protected beliefs." Then the motion means nothing, and the party can withdraw it today. It cannot be both. A policy that treats Zionism "as any other form of racism" and a promise that no Zionist will ever be treated as a racist cannot both be true. One of them is not. The reply concedes, in passing, that Zionism is a protected belief. That is the point. Declaring a protected belief to be racism, as party policy, is what the Equality and Human Rights Commission has been asked to investigate. Discipline is not the only harm, either. A Jewish member who wants to stand as a candidate, chair a local party or sit on a committee now does so in a party whose policy calls their belief racism and which has committed itself to "explicitly opposing Zionism in our internal and external communications going forward" (page 6).

They say: "We want to reassure you our Jewish members are safe and welcome in the Party as before." "As before" is the problem. Before, the party had not declared the belief of around nine in ten British Jews to be racism. Jewish members are welcome on one condition: that they accept being called racists by their own party's policy. Four of the party's five MPs have rejected the motion in public. The party has been referred to the Equality and Human Rights Commission over it. A reassurance that changes nothing is not a reassurance.

They say: "You suggest reversing this motion. Our policy is voted on by members, and as a completely democratic organisation we cannot immediately reverse a motion which conference has voted to pass." A party that can vote a motion in can vote it out. Conference meets twice a year and can rescind what it passed. "Cannot" means "will not". Nobody is asking the leadership to overrule a vote. We are asking it to say in public that the motion is wrong, as four of its five MPs have, and to bring the vote that reverses it. A members' vote is no defence in law. The Equality Act 2010 binds a political party whatever its members vote for, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission's guidance for parties says so. The United Nations voted that "Zionism is racism" in 1975 and voted to revoke it in 1991. Votes can be reversed. That is what a vote is.

They say: "The Party and Leadership are aware of the strength of peoples views on this motion and we will be doing everything we can to make sure all our members, including our Jewish members, feel safe and secure in the Party." Everything except the one thing that would do it. The reply offers Jewish members a feeling of safety while keeping the policy that calls them racists. It does not say that Zionism is not racism. It does not say the motion is wrong. It does not dispute a line of it. Five days after the motion passed, Zack Polanski lost the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. The voters have given their answer. The party has yet to give its own.