The Zionism is Racism motion has left the Greens with no good options

From the moment the Green Party was asked to decide whether “Zionism is racism,” there were no good possible outcomes. The conference delegates were forced to choose between chasing out its Jews or appearing indifferent to Palestinian suffering. For a party based on consensus-based coalition-building, this was always going to be fraught. 

I am the rabbi to a small Progressive synagogue in south-west London. Like many on the left, I have spent the last three years sending aid to Gaza, blocking settlers from attacking farmers in the West Bank, and trying to bring down Israel’s extremist regime. This comes from a deep Jewish belief in the dignity of human beings and the terrible sin of war: values that are taught in many synagogues across Britain.

A couple of weeks ago, my suburban Jewish community was baselessly accused of being at the heart of a Zionist plot to control the Green Party. Members of my synagogue’s council (most of whom are not even Greens) were doxxed.

I felt many emotions since my congregants were accused of being part of a conspiracy. There is fear: for what it means to have members suddenly on this watch-list. There is bafflement: that people whose values I share, some of whom I have protested with for human rights, should stand charged with such offences. There is anger, confusion, and sadness. 

But most of all, a sinking feeling: I’ve heard this story before. I’ve been in this story before. This is a re-run of old battles, with the same cast reprising many of their former roles.

I was raised a Marxist and, while I have deviated considerably from the doctrine (especially about religion), I have been active on the Jewish radical left since childhood.

So, I have heard the slogan “Zionism is racism” before. It is a watchword of Stalinist hardliners to torment the anti-authoritarian left. Like Kronstadt and pick axes, it was a meme apologists trolled out to show their contempt for the “bleeding hearts” who cared about how the Soviet Union had treated ethnic minorities, satellite nations, and political dissidents. 

The phrase was concocted in the USSR during its purges of Jews. Stalin had initially supported the creation of Israel, thinking that the country would join the Soviet Bloc. By the time of his death, the Generalissimo had decided Israel would not be his ally. Meanwhile, at home, his power was shaky, and he needed to scapegoat Jews as a distraction. 

Stalin revived an old canard from the Tsarist era about Jews secretly plotting to rule Russia. Through the early 1950s, the Soviet press denounced Jews as simultaneously chauvinist nationalists and rootless cosmopolitans with no homeland. In both cases, they called this shady group of counter-revolutionaries “the Zionists.”

Stalin planned to enact public executions of key Jews followed by mass deportations. He died before he got the chance, but his supporters kept the programme alive. They forbade Jews leaving Russia and ramped up discriminatory attacks.

The Communists launched an ideological programme of “Zionology,” lasting over two decades, that sought to understand the “racist, bourgeois, counter-revolutionary” character of the Jew, attacking its God, Scriptures, “financial power,” and “ethnic characteristics.” They used ‘Zionists’ and ‘Jews’ interchangeably, with the excuse that they were targeting an ideology.

When Israel formally aligned with the Western powers and won a series of wars against neighbouring Arab states, the issue came to a climax. The USSR’s backers brought Resolution 3379 to the UN General Assembly, which condemned Zionism as a racist, imperialist threat to world peace. 

Under the morally righteous guise of opposing racism, the Communist countries could vindicate Jewish persecutions, and the Muslim countries could justify Jewish expulsions.

Eventually, the Communists revoked their policy as part of de-Stalinisation, and the UN repealed the resolution to make peace deals possible. But the hardliners stuck by the phrase and used it to indicate their entire programme.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, those Stalinists have spent the last few decades seeking new regimes to support, including Assad’s Syria, Gaddafi’s Libya, and Kim’s Korea. The Communist hardliners have drifted across the British political landscape. They have been expelled from Labour, rejected by Your Party, only now to settle on the Greens. 

The left groups who were most trained at tackling Stalinists – Trotskyists, anarchists, and left social democrats – have declined in numbers, confidence, and ability. Having been insulated from much far-left in-fighting over the decades, the Green Party now has to face recycled arguments for the first time.

This week, one of my congregants brought an amendment to the anti-Zionist motion, modestly requesting that, were it to pass, Jews would not be victimised for attending synagogue. Another stood up to speak for it, and was immediately heckled as a Zionist. The amendment was rejected. 

To make this very clear. A conspiracy theorist posted an ‘exposé’ claiming Jewish Greens were part of a Zionist conspiracy because they attended my synagogue. Jewish Green Party members requested that, if this policy passed, they would not be disciplined because they go to synagogue. That plea was denied.

Most tentative supporters of this motion are motivated by deep concern for the rights of Palestinians. We have seen decades of mass murder in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and increasingly hostile treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Every compassionate human wants to see justice for Palestine and safety for Jews. But we have endured years of people trying to treat Jewish and Muslim safety as mutually exclusive; to treat caring about antisemitism and concern about Palestinian human rights as opposed. 

That’s why this motion never left the Greens with any good options. It is deliberately designed to force them into backing Stalinist conspiracy theorists or looking like Netanyahu’s defenders. There is a reason no other mainstream party has ever adopted this policy, and it is not down to sneaky Jewish lobbyists lurking in the shadows.

On Sunday morning, most of the Green Party leadership and its loyalists will disappear to Holborn to campaign for Polanski. A small group of Jews will be left to argue for their continued existence in the party to which they have given their lives. I cannot see how anyone will conclude this debate feeling happy or empowered. 

From the outset, this debate was intended to be divisive. From crumbling Russian despots, through Islamic regimes looking for distraction techniques, this mantra is an established tool to get people arguing over semantics and looking for ordinary people to blame.

This time, some of those ordinary people are members of my synagogue, and I can only despair.