Israel has barred Green Party leader Zack Polanski from entering the country after party members voted to describe Zionism as racist.
The decision was taken at the Green Party conference in Brighton, where a majority backed a motion formally opposing Zionism. Israel accused the party of giving “legitimacy to terrorism” through the vote.
Israel’s foreign ministry condemned the resolution as a “stain” on Britain’s history and announced that Mr Polanski would be prohibited from visiting the country.
In a statement issued today, the ministry said: “As a first step, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has decided this evening to declare Green Party leader Zack Polanski barred from entering Israel.”
Conference delegates also rejected an amendment that would have stopped the policy from being used to “pressure, proscribe or discipline” members because of their links to Zionist synagogues or other Jewish organisations.
The controversial motion, which opposes the existence of a Jewish state and backs the creation of a Palestinian state, has triggered deep divisions within the Green Party.
Mr Polanski was not at the vote and has distanced himself from the result. The party’s five MPs also released a statement rejecting the newly adopted position.
Former Green Party leaders likewise voiced alarm, with some claiming the decision had turned the party into the UK’s “first openly anti-Semitic party”.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski addresses supporters at a campaign event in King’s Cross, London
Mr Polanski gives his keynote address at the Green Party’s annual conference in Brighton on October 2
In an earlier statement attacking the conference vote, Israel’s foreign ministry said: “The Green Party in Britain has stopped acting as a political party and become an organisation that gives legitimacy to terrorism.”
It added: “The Greens have adopted not only the colour associated with Hamas, but also its ideology — the destruction of the State of Israel through armed struggle.”
The ministry said the motion went “far beyond the boundaries of legitimate political debate” and warned that, while it remained in force, it would represent “a stain on the history of the UK”.
It also called on all British political parties, particularly the governing Labour Party, to reject what it described as a “twisted resolution”.
In a joint statement with the Green MPs and his deputies, Mr Polanski said support for Palestinian rights was not incompatible with defending the rights of Jewish people.
Former Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said the policy risked “alienating a significant proportion of Jewish people”, including those who strongly oppose the actions of the Israeli government.
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Her former co-leader Adrian Ramsay and Caroline Lucas, the Greens’ first MP, also spoke out against the resolution.
Shahrar Ali, the party’s former deputy leader, told the Daily Mail: “I am deeply ashamed. Making ‘Zionism is Racism’ official Green Party policy has made us the first openly anti-Semitic party in the UK.”
Deputy leader Rachel Millward and Motheen Ali applaud during the Green Party conference
The motion, first reported by the Daily Mail, states that the Green Party opposes Zionism, defined as a movement supporting the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel.
And it effectively calls for Israel to be replaced by a ‘single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital’.
It passed after 1,022 voted in favour, with 813 voting against.
Mr Polanski instead spent Sunday campaigning in Holborn and St Pancras ahead of Thursday’s by-election.
One Jewish Green member said many may now quit the party. It comes after a ‘safe room’ was set up for Jewish Greens in Brighton.
The Daily Mail can also reveal two members had their passes revoked – a Zionist after silently protesting in a Palestine fringe meeting, and the other, a Jewish Green, for filming it.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: ‘One look beneath the surface of Zack Polanski’s Green Party shows a party toxic to its core.’
And Labour chairman Bridget Phillipson said the policy was ‘shameful’.
There are suggestions the motion could breach the Equality Act, with Adam Wagner KC writing on LinkedIn last night that it may ‘discriminate against’ Jews.
Campaign Against Antisemitism claimed the policy was ‘racism in its clearest form’.
And Luciana Berger, who quit Labour in 2019 after stating it was ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ under Jeremy Corbyn, said the Greens ‘should be shunned’.
A Green Party spokesman said it opposes ‘racism in all its forms’.