Green Party's Anti-Zionism Motion Unjustly Conflates Zionism with Racism and Targets Jewish Identity
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jonathanfreedland. "The Green party’s anti-Zionism motion is yet another attempt to tell Jews how we should think | Jonathan Freedland | The Guardian." October 2, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The Green party is considering a motion that calls Zionism racist, which the author argues shows they don't understand what Zionism actually means to most Jews—it's not just politics, but a core part of Jewish religious identity and history. He argues this motion would essentially exclude most Jews from the party and follows a long historical pattern of demanding Jews abandon their identity to be accepted by others.
Conclusion
The Green party's motion declaring Zionism to be racism is misguided and effectively antisemitic, because it misunderstands what Zionism actually means and demands that Jews disavow a core part of their religious and historical identity in order to be accepted.
Premises
- Zionism is a broad umbrella term encompassing deeply varied political views (from rightwing to leftwing, religious to secular), unified only by the belief in Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland—so branding all Zionists as racist ignores this diversity.
- Zionism is not merely a modern political ideology separable from Judaism; references to Israel, Jerusalem, and Zion are embedded in Jewish religious practice and prayer (such as the Kaddish) that predate the political movement by millennia.
- The 'settler colonialism' framing used in the motion is inaccurate because Zionism represents a return to an ancestral homeland with deep historical and linguistic ties, unlike colonial settlement in a foreign land.
- Nearly all synagogues and mainstream Jewish institutions identify with Zionism in some form, meaning the motion would effectively exclude almost the entire Jewish community from the party.
- Historically, antisemitism has recurrently taken the form of demanding Jews disavow some belief or practice as the price of social acceptance; this motion fits that same pattern, replacing 'embrace Christ' with 'disavow Israel.'
- The Green party's own Jewish members attempted to amend the motion to protect basic religious practice and were rejected, and a Jewish anti-Zionist was shouted down at a party event, indicating the motion's proponents are not engaging in good faith with Jewish perspectives.
Assumptions
- That the motion's proposers, despite good intentions regarding Gaza, have fundamentally misunderstood or mischaracterized Zionism and Judaism.
- That equating an identity group's core beliefs with racism constitutes a form of prejudice against that group, even if not explicitly intended as such.
- That the majority or mainstream Jewish self-understanding of Zionism (as tied to religious and historical identity) should be the standard for defining the term, rather than how critics or opponents define it.
- That criticism of Israeli government policy and opposition to 'Zionism' as a concept are meaningfully distinct, and that the motion fails to maintain this distinction.
- That historical patterns of antisemitism are relevantly similar to the current situation, justifying the comparison to religious persecution during the Inquisition.