Israel Lobby Hits Greens; Members Refuse to Fold

Green suspensions have put Palestine politics under pressure inside the party - members stop anti-Zionism being turned into a disciplinary risk. Right, so another Green Party suspension has now put the party’s pro Palestine politics under even more pressure now, as it starts to look like a deliberate targeting of anti-Zionists is being borne out. Tony Greenstein, a Jewish anti-Zionist and long-standing Palestine campaigner, has been suspended and now so has Mark Adderley, a filmmaker, anti-genocide campaigner and Green Party candidate for Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood in Croydon. Adderley has not shuffled off into the corner and apologised for existing over this either. He has said he is disgusted, he has accused Labour minister Steve Reed and others of defamatory smears, he has blasted the Green Party administration for folding to weaponised antisemitism claims, and he has said he will seek legal advice. Labour figures and pro-Israel media have been pushing the familiar line that a party attracting Palestine supporters must have an antisemitism problem, because apparently British politics is now just one long complaints form with Steve Reed holding the pen apparently. The damage is not yet landing on the people driving that pressure. It is landing on the Greens, and the question now is whether members force the party to resist it or watch them get trapped in the same position Jeremy Corbyn did with everything that then followed. The smear was meant to isolate anti-Zionists inside the Greens, but for as much as two suspensions on this front are alarming, it has also put the whole complaints machine under public scrutiny before the trap has settled into party habit. Zack Polanski of course ends up sitting in the middle of this because he leads the Green Party of England and Wales, not because he personally has to have pressed the suspension button. The official Green Party complaints structure has specific routes through complaints, referral and disciplinary machinery.