The Green Party’s Anti-Zionism and the Politics of Antisemitism

Tony Blair, long-serving British Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007, recently declared that “Britain’s Fastest-Growing Party has an Anti-Jewish Problem.”

Note well. Blair did not call it an anti-Israel problem or an anti-Zionist problem. He gave it the correct label: anti-Jewish. Not running for office, Blair felt at liberty to call a spade a spade, letting the people and goddamn polls react.

The crop of measly heads of state not at liberty to speak the truth, among them the UK’s Andy Burnham, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and Germany’s Friedrich Merz, would have cringed to the tips of their curled up toes.

“Israel-bashing,” explained the late Professor Robert Wistrich “is the key to acceptance.”

The anti-Jewish problem arose from the Green party resurrecting the dynamite slogan, “Zionism Is Racism,” trusting it to give the party a firm foothold in Parliament.

It is now 51 years since UN General Assembly adopted the original slogan. American ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan greeted the event with the dire pronouncement that,

“A great evil has been loosed upon the world.”

Great as all that? Granted, racism is evil — one of the few things on which most people will agree. But what makes treating it and Zionism on equal terms especially wicked?

For one thing, as idol worship is the sin of sins against God, racism is the sin of sins against humanity.

Second of all is the Apartheid link which — take care Israel — got South Africa expelled from the community of nations.

Thirdly, racists are inclined to look at people of different color or ethnicity or culture and think, “I wish you weren’t around. You are everything that’s wrong with the world, and it would be better without you people.” Which sounds a lot like a warm up for murder or, more like it, for genocide.

Topping it all, race discrimination is not just evil but against the law.

We can therefore understand the magnet for Green leader Zack Polanski who commented on the policy.

“If your Zionism is the displacement of the Palestinian people then that is clearly racist, and I say that as a Jewish leader of a British political party.”

Since two-thirds of Britain’s Jews identify as Zionists, Green policy makers effectively hitched their wagon to the Holocaust creed: the Jews have forfeited the right to exist.

To give the context, probably the most lied about wars in human history are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general and the ensuing Gaza war in particular.

The Green party, for example:

Treats Palestinian nationalism as legit while it condemns Jewish nationalism. One is considered noble and the other a crime.
Does not consider the Jews to be a people while the Palestinians are a distinct people. Jews are merely a group with no collective history, no land, and no common destiny — the very attributes which are given to the Palestinians.
Jews are occupiers and colonialists while Palestinians are native to Palestine.
One gets away with murder while the other gets raked over the coals for murder.
Treats the Old Testament in which God gives the land to Abraham’s Israelite descendents as a mythical tale. The identical Old Testament of patriarchs and prophets that underlies Islamic faith — the Palestinians’ faith — is the real McCoy.

The statement of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani to mark the 3rd anniversary of Oct. 7 amplifies the con trick.

“The Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians — including more than 21,000 children. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. We must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity.”

How does a political party get away with treating Zionism “as any other form of racism”? By that pro-forma cop-out: the party “rejects any attempt to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.” It’s akin to the bank robber caught red handed and who rejects attempts to call him a bank robber.

Hand-wringing Zionist pundits grope for a way out of the quagmire. “We had better figure a way of restoring truth and reality or there is going to be problems worse than anything we are experiencing now.”

Meanwhile global reaction to Oct. 7 bamboozled Zionists, wondering “how can so many people celebrate a Massacre? Remember, pro-Palestinian protesters cheered frenzied mass murder before Israel retaliated.”

Wrong and wrong again. Restoring truth and reality is just not on the agenda. The other side long ago captured the narrative. Fact sheets have little or no power. Psychology or human nature reigns supreme.

Once publicly and volubly committed to a cause or a cult, people don’t change their minds. The costs of admitting they were mistaken are sky high, and it would take an idiot to deliberately make an outcast of himself. Party leader Zack Polanski, identifying Jew and all, is no idiot.

Elder of Ziyon substacker explains, “Every method used by modern anti-Israel and antisemitic activists is not primarily about spreading information, but about creating loyalty. It’s about binding people to the cause through visible, repeated, identity-shaping actions. Advertising execs have known for decades that commitment creates belief, not the other way around. Pitted against those who have already signed, marched, donated, and staked their identity, truth is nearly useless. Modern antisemitic movements have mastered the playbook (for manipulating human nature).”

What they have not mastered is the cash and career rewards for slandering Israel. Unless that spigot is closed no power on earth can induce the global hate industry to smoke the peace pipe with Zionists.

Bits at a time can however be tackled by making defamers pay the price. The only effective response to NAZA is one that prevailed against the film Jenin, Jenin, which arguably defamed the IDF to a greater degree than NAZA did.

Over eight days of fighting in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002 some 53 Palestinians, mostly terrorists, were killed while 23 IDF soldiers fell in battle.

Speaking about his film, Mohammed Bakri said that critics were not prepared to accept his “version of the truth.” IDF veterans of the battle not only took the film producer to court, but also two Israeli cinemas for screening Jenin, Jenin.

The Supreme Court upheld a banning of the film in Israel, on top of which it awarded millions in damages to the plaintiffs. The result: Bakri never produced another Israeli film.

Adopt a similar gloves-off approach to fighting NAZA, says Michael Oren. Veterans of the “Israeli Air Force and graduates of Unit 8200 must sue the filmmakers for libel.”

“Israel-bashing,” explained the late Professor Robert Wistrich “is the key to acceptance.” Even a humble saxophone player can aspire to quick celebrity-hood. “It is Gilad Atzmon’s blunt anti-Zionism rather than his music that has given him an international profile,” wrote the Guardian.

It would take an all-powerful world leader to dismantle the anti-Jew narrative. If someone can pull off the miracle, a Nobel Peace Prize would be a miserly reward.

READ MORE from Steve Apfel:

NAZA: When an Anti-Israel Gaza Documentary Wins at Venice

The Two-State Solution Is Dead — Long Live the Two-State Solution

Trump’s Ceasefire Trap: Iran, Gaza, and the Politics of Peace

Steve Apfel is a veteran authority on anti-Zionism and a prolific author published widely.