Greens For Palestine Fire Back; Stop Apologising To The Israel Lobby

If the Greens want Palestine credibility, they can stop apologising to the lobby and start defending the people who gave it to them. Right, so Greens for Palestine have just done the thing the Green Party machine should have done for itself. Anti-Zionist candidates are being thrown under the bus the moment hostile mainstream media pressure arrives. Palestinians inside the party are saying attempts are being made against their own “Zionism is Racism” motion set to return at Autumn Conference to soften or rewrite it by non-Palestinians, notably despite the fact Jewish members amongst others helped draft the original and very much accepted motion. And that the party that has gained credibility from being better than Labour and other parties on the subject of Palestine and the genocide in Gaza is now being warned not to become Labour the moment the Israel lobby starts banging on the door once more. Greens for Palestine are telling their own party, that solidarity is not a badge you wear when it wins applause and then shove in a drawer the moment it attracts some pressure. You either mean it or you don’t, you stand by it or you don’t. You can’t keep saying it while candidates get thrown under a bus the minute they breathe in a direction Zionists don’t like. Greens for Palestine have sent one warning to the Green Party Executive, the national executive layer of the party, because they say local and national party figures are believing hostile press attacks and hanging members out to dry. They have also put out a separate statement over their Zionism is racism motion. That second letter is even sharper in some ways, because it is not just about candidates. It is about Palestinians inside the Green Party saying that their own political words, their own description of their own oppression, are not there to be cleaned up by people who are more frightened of accusations than they are committed to justice, quite rightly in my view. The complaint is that non-Palestinian Greens are trying to rewrite or soften it before the party’s own members get to deal with it democratically.