Green Party leader Zack Polanski has been barred from entering Israel after his party adopted a controversial policy defining Zionism as racism.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced the decision on Sunday evening after Green Party members backed the motion at their annual conference in Brighton. Israel’s Foreign Ministry described the resolution as antisemitic and said Polanski would be refused entry to the country.
The decision follows a conference vote in which 1,022 members backed the motion, and 813 opposed it. The policy formally establishes the Greens as an anti-Zionist party and describes Zionism as an “ethnonationalist political project”. Polanski did not take part in the vote
Polanski, who is Jewish and has described himself as anti-Zionist, did not participate in Sunday’s vote. He had left the conference to campaign in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, where he is standing as the Green candidate.
The motion also supports the establishment of a single democratic state throughout historic Palestine, as well as Palestinian right of return, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and a full arms embargo against Israel.
The policy has exposed significant divisions within the party, with a number of senior Green politicians opposing the motion.
Israel condemns Green Party policy
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the resolution constituted what it regarded as a “clear antisemitic text” under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, arguing that it denied Jewish people the right to self-determination.
The Israeli government also accused the policy of legitimising armed struggle against Israel and advocating a position which would result in the end of Israel as a separate Jewish state. Those are claims made by the Israeli government in response to the Green policy.
The Green Party, however, says its position is directed against Zionism as a political ideology and not Jewish people.
Following the vote, Polanski, the party’s five MPs and its co-deputy leaders issued a joint statement insisting there was “no conflict between supporting the rights of Palestinians and the rights of Jewish people” and saying the party would oppose discrimination and harassment.
The Green Party said the conference decision would become party policy while reiterating its commitment to equality, human rights and opposition to racism.
