The motion, line by line

One sentence, two things. First, a mainstream British party declares itself opposed to the belief held by the great majority of British Jews: that Israel should exist. Second, it commits to "a single ... State in all of historic Palestine", which is a polite way of saying no Israel. Self-determination is affirmed for one people and abolished for the other. Everything that follows is built on that.

This is a definition written in order to be condemned. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people, like every other people, have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, where Jews have lived continuously for approximately 4,000 years. It says nothing about excluding or dominating anyone. Israel's Declaration of Independence promises "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex", and two million Arab citizens of Israel vote, sit in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. The motion defines a word to mean something its adherents reject, then condemns them for holding it.

Note the phrase "and, now it exists, the continuity". The motion is explicit that its objection is to Israel continuing to exist.

"European settler-colonial" is a slogan, not history. More than half of Israeli Jews descend from the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, some 850,000 of whom were driven out of Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Syria and elsewhere after 1948. Colonists have a mother country to go home to. Jews fleeing Europe and the Arab world had none; they were going home.

Criticise Israeli policy in the West Bank as hard as you like: Zionists do, every day, in Israel's own press and parliament. But apartheid was a system of racial separation written into the law of a single state. Inside Israel, Arab citizens have the same vote, the same courts, the same hospitals and universities as Jewish citizens; an Arab judge sat on the panel that sent an Israeli president to prison. Whatever word fits the situation in the occupied territories, it is a dispute about policy and borders. The motion uses it to do something else: to declare the belief in a Jewish state itself to be racism. That is not criticism of a government. It is a verdict on a people's right to exist.

A disclaimer that does not survive contact with the facts. Survey after survey finds that the great majority of British Jews regard Israel's existence as part of their Jewish identity. A rule that condemns a belief held by most of a protected group falls on that group, whatever the preamble says. That is exactly why the Equality Act 2010 recognises indirect discrimination: a "neutral" rule that disproportionately disadvantages people of one race or belief is unlawful unless it can be justified. Saying "not all Jews are Zionists" is like saying "not all Sikhs wear turbans" and then banning turbans.

No other mainstream British party has declared itself opposed to the core belief of a British minority. From this sentence on, a Jewish Green who thinks Israel should exist holds, by their own party's policy, a racist belief. The Equality and Human Rights Commission's guidance for political parties says a party must not discriminate against, harass or victimise its members, associates, guests or those seeking membership because of race, religion or belief. A party cannot adopt this resolution and comply with that guidance.

As drafted, the motion rejected both the IHRA definition of antisemitism, adopted by the UK Government and most councils, and the Jerusalem Declaration, the alternative written by IHRA's own critics. The party's Standing Orders Committee deleted that sentence, but the motion's briefing paper attacks both definitions for pages and describes them as "weaponry". What remains is a party deciding for itself what counts as anti-Jewish discrimination, over the heads of Jews. No other minority in Britain is told by a political party which definition of prejudice against them it is allowed to use.

This is the end of Israel, stated as party policy. A single Palestinian state "in all of historic Palestine" leaves no Jewish state anywhere. The United Nations, the UK Government, the European Union, the Arab League's own peace initiative and the Palestinian Authority all support two states. The Green Party now stands to the extreme of all of them. "Right of return for Palestinians and their descendants" would, by design, make Jews a minority in the only country created as a refuge for them, under a state the motion says is to be achieved by "all available means". There are 174 countries with a majority religion and 43 with an official one. Nobody proposes dissolving any of them. Only the Jewish one.

"All available means" is not an accident of drafting. The motion's own briefing paper, section 9, "Affirmation of the Right to Resist in International Law", quotes UN General Assembly Resolution 37/43 on liberation "by all available means, including armed struggle" and says: "This legal principle underpins this motion's affirmation of Palestinian rights." So, by its authors' own account, a British political party has affirmed armed struggle against a sovereign state and member of the United Nations, in the shadow of 7 October 2023, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. That is the motion the Green Party passed.

Full embargoes and sanctions on the one Jewish state, demanded of no other country on earth, including those with far worse records on every measure the motion claims to care about. The call for a total boycott of Israel, and of everything and everyone connected to it, reaches British Jews directly: their families, their charities, their synagogues and their students.

Marwan Barghouti was convicted in 2004, by an Israeli civilian court, of five counts of murder for attacks on civilians during the Second Intifada, and is serving five life sentences. Calling him a "prisoner of conscience" tells you what the motion's authors think of killing Israeli civilians.

Palestine Action was proscribed by Parliament in 2025 under the Terrorism Act 2000, after its members broke into RAF Brize Norton and damaged military aircraft. Membership of it, and support for it, are criminal offences. This resolution commits the Green Party, a party with MPs, councillors and candidates for public office, to campaign on behalf of a recognised terrorist organisation, in the same document that affirms "struggle by all available means". No other mainstream British party has done anything like it.

The motion treats as settled fact a "genocide" and "apartheid" that are contested findings and live legal questions, and signs the party up wholesale to the demands of an outside campaign group. That is a policy made of slogans.

This is the clause that turns words into discipline. If Zionism is "treated as any other form of racism", then a member who says Israel should exist is to be treated like a member who expresses racism: complaints, investigations, suspensions, expulsions. For Jewish members that is harassment and victimisation on grounds of ethnicity and belief, in plain breach of the Equality Act 2010 and of the Equality and Human Rights Commission's guidance for political parties. The motion does not merely insult Jewish Greens. It sets up the machinery to remove them.

The official voice of a mainstream British party is now committed to opposing, in every communication, the belief of most British Jews. Think about what that means for a Jewish candidate, councillor or staff member expected to speak for the party.

Every Green councillor is now instructed to bring this into the council chamber. That is why this campaign writes to councillors and local parties as well as to head office: the motion makes it their business.

The motion's authors know that the world already tried this. Resolution 3379 was pushed through in 1975 by the Soviet bloc and its allies, and repealed in 1991 by 111 votes to 25, with the UK, the United States, every democracy and the Soviet Union itself voting to repeal, because it had fuelled hatred of Jews and done nothing for peace. The briefing paper's answer is that the world was wrong and the slogan was right. That is the company the Green Party has chosen.

The paper spends two pages arguing that Jews should lose the word for their own persecution. "Antisemitism" was coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr, a German Jew-hater, to mean exactly one thing: hatred of Jews. It has meant that for 150 years, to the United Nations, the UK Government, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the courts and every dictionary. No other minority is told by a political party that the name of the prejudice against them is "inherently discriminatory" and must be replaced. The motion that claims not to be about Jews devotes its longest passages to redefining what may be said about them.

The IHRA working definition is used by the UK Government, the devolved governments, most councils and universities, and dozens of countries. Its text says plainly that criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. What it does name as antisemitic is "claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor". The motion does exactly that, and so the paper has to dismiss the definition as "weaponry". The Jerusalem Declaration, written by IHRA's critics, is condemned too, because it protects "the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and flourish". Any definition that leaves Jews a state is unacceptable to the motion's authors.

The authors cite the very ruling that protects the Jewish members they want to discipline. If anti-Zionism is a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act, then Zionism, a belief about the same question held with at least the same seriousness by far more people, is protected by exactly the same test. A party that resolves to treat a protected belief "as any other form of racism" and to act on that through its disciplinary machinery is doing precisely what the Miller tribunal found unlawful, with the roles reversed.

Disagreement is explained away in advance as Israeli state propaganda and "bots". If you are a Jewish Green who objects to this motion, the paper has already decided why: you are either a dupe of a foreign government or a machine. That is how the motion deals with the people it is about.

The Jewish groups listed are, by their own names, anti-Zionist groups. Consulting Jews who already agree with you is not consulting the Jewish community. The Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Community Security Trust and the mainstream synagogue bodies, which between them speak for the great majority of British Jews, do not appear.