A half century after most of the world labelled Zionism racism, a major Anglosphere party has finally echoed the call. The Greens’ resolution is a significant blow to Tel Aviv, Ottawa, supremacist lobbyists and Elizabeth May.
On Sunday, the Green Party of England and Wales adopted an anti-Zionist resolution. Echoing the 1975 UN General Assembly motion, the Greens’ motion labels Zionism “a form of racism”. It also calls for a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine” and to de-proscribe Palestine Action.
Zionists are panicking. The Israeli government immediately banned the (Jewish) leader of the Greens from entering the country and opposition leader Yair Lapid posted a long denunciation, concluding, “It is not Zionism that’s racism, it is the Green Party.”
Following in the footsteps of his beloved supremacist state, Liberal MP Anthony Hausefather posted, “the UK Greens have crossed the rubicon. Anti-Zionism (the complete denial of Israel’s right to exist) is antisemitism plain and simple. I am disgusted.”
Housefather is especially angry because he just convinced his government to explicitly label opposition to Jewish supremacist colonialism racism. A Public Safety Canada report released last week stated that antisemitism “includes anti-Zionism.”
More than any other Canadian political leader, the resolution should embarrass Elizabeth May. Instead of accepting members’ desire to challenge Jewish supremacist colonialism, May tanked the Green party in no small measure due to her philosemitism and Anglican Zionism.
In 2016 May threatened to resign as leader of the Greens if the party didn’t organize a special convention immediately after members strongly backed a partial Boycott Divestment and Sanctions resolution in a pre-convention online poll, convention caucus and full convention vote. In response she forced the party to spend over $100,000 to organize a special convention five months later in a bid to overturn a single resolution. As part of her stunningly undemocratic bid to reverse members’ BDS vote, May fired the sponsor of the resolution, Dmitri Lascaris, and two other shadow critics who defended the members vote.
While May expected the backers of the BDS resolution to give up in the face of her control of the party apparatus, Palestine supporters out organized May in the lead-up to the special convention. As such, May was forced into agreeing with a resolution that deepened the boycott call but withdrew the BDS formulation. But through her control of the party’s megaphone May spun a false narrative of the consensus resolution, claiming the party did not support BDS. In 2019 May told the Canadian Jewish News “We have nothing to do with BDS. We repealed it. We are not a party that condones BDS. We would never tolerate anybody in our party who violates our core values, who are anti-Semitic.”
On multiple occasions May has insinuated that pro-Palestinian members, notably Lascaris, were antisemitic and during the 2020 Green Party leadership race she smeared Lascaris. It was part of why Lascaris was barred from running (he ultimately overturned the ban). As she worked to undermine anti-apartheid voices, May threw her weight behind the little-known Annamie Paul, securing her victory in the leadership race. Deeply anti-Palestinian, Paul destroyed her leadership and severely damaged the Green Party by pushing racist positions during Israel’s 2021 slaughter in Gaza.
Amidst Israel’s holocaust in Gaza and violence across the region over the past three years, May has continued to make statements that prioritize Israeli victims and Jewish feelings over oppressed Palestinians.
Unlike the Canadian Greens which has one MP, 10 000 members and two percent in the polls, the UK party is in ascendance. They have five seats, 200,000 members and over 10% in the polls.
If May had heeded members will a decade ago, the Green party, progressive Canadians and Palestinians would be better off. Elizabeth May should be ashamed.
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