Britain’s Greens and the Jews: Belonging on Condition

*This article was originally published in French

Must a Jew justify the synagogue they attend to have a place in a political party? The question should have seemed absurd. The conference of the Greens of England and Wales has just made it disturbingly relevant.

On October 4 in Brighton, members voted by 1,022 to 813 to adopt a motion equating Zionism with racism. They also rejected an amendment intended to protect members from the consequences of that motion on account of their affiliation with a synagogue or a Jewish organization that identifies as Zionist. This second vote sheds light on the first. At the very least, delegates could have guaranteed that their resolution would not be used to target their own Jewish members over their communal affiliations. They refused to provide that guarantee.

A synagogue is a place where people pray, marry, mourn a loved one, and pass on a tradition to their children. A connection to Israel may find expression there through liturgy, family history, or communal life. Must those ties now be examined to decide whether a member is acceptable? Must members account for a prayer, an association, a family allegiance?

This is a particularly explicit form of the conditional belonging that has taken shape in recent months in controversies targeting figures as different as Barbara Butch and Nadav Eyal. The Jew is welcome, provided they make their Jewishness acceptable. It is up to them to choose the right affiliations, renounce the wrong attachments, and prove their distance. And no declaration of principle can guarantee that they will continue to pass the test: even the fiercest criticism of the Israeli government is not enough, and says nothing about the synagogue they attend. How much of their Jewish life would they have to relinquish to escape suspicion?

As for the political meaning of this anti-Zionism, the motion leaves little room for doubt. It advocates a single Palestinian state throughout “historic Palestine.” In place of two states coexisting, it therefore proposes the disappearance of Israel as a Jewish nation-state. Jewish self-determination is being disqualified in the name of anti-racism.

None of this is new. The formula “Zionism is racism” has a history. In November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly enshrined it in Resolution 3379. It took sixteen years to secure its repeal, on December 16, 1991. Britain’s Greens are now reviving an equation that the UN itself eventually repudiated.

History also teaches us how easily the word “Zionist” can be used to label Jews whose actual convictions matter little. In Poland in 1968, a so-called “anti-Zionist” campaign turned Jewish citizens into suspects, removed them from their positions, and drove some 13,000 of them to leave the country.

That precedent helps us recognize a mechanism: a political label becomes an accusation, then extends to people, their institutions, and their collective ties. Simply being branded a “Zionist” is enough to put someone on the defensive. Seen in this light, the refusal to protect synagogue affiliations takes on its full gravity.

That same Sunday in London, a demonstration marked the ninetieth anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street. In 1936, Jews from the East End, trade unionists, and other residents had stood in the way of Oswald Mosley’s fascists. Ninety years later, behind a banner denouncing antisemitism and all forms of racism, some demonstrators chanted: “Zionists are not welcome here” and “Zionism is fascism.”

Which Jews would be welcome today to celebrate resistance to fascism? Those who had first given the right answers about Israel? We would be honoring the Jews of yesterday while subjecting those of today to an examination of their beliefs.

The case of Zack Polanski, the Green Party’s leader, is revealing. Jewish and a self-described anti-Zionist, he had himself argued that members belonging to a synagogue that identifies as Zionist should not be treated differently. Party members did not follow his lead. The revolution always devours its own children. But he had also said that Zionism, if it means the displacement and genocide of Palestinians, is racist, thereby validating the very framework whose effects he was seeking to limit. His Jewishness resolves none of these contradictions. It does not entitle him to define the Jewishness of other Jews, nor does it absolve his party from answering for the consequences of its votes. No Jew, whatever their position, can certify as harmless a policy that exposes other Jews to suspicion.

Within the European Green political family, Germany’s Sven Giegold has drawn a clear line. He says the British resolution contradicts the principles of the European Green Party, which is committed to a two-state solution. He reiterates the convictions of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen: Israel’s right to exist, Palestinian self-determination, respect for international law, and human dignity.

The Greens of England and Wales belong to the European Green Party, as do France’s Les Écologistes. Those principles should therefore bind the entire political family. Their worth is measured by the willingness to defend them when one’s own allies violate them—the same allies whose ability to “restore hope to the left” was praised in a text published in November 2025 on the website of Les Écologistes Hors de France.

Can Marine Tondelier and the leaders of France’s Greens affirm that supporting Israel’s right to exist is not racism? That attending a synagogue with ties to Israel cannot be grounds for suspicion? And that they reject this resolution within their European political family?

In Brighton, a party of the left refused to protect its Jewish members. In Paris, remaining silent would amount to accepting it.

Simone Rodan-Benzaquen is senior envoy for Europe at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).