In The Man of Destiny (1898), George Bernard Shaw gave Napoleon the definitive line on the English: “You will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king’s head on republican principles.” Britain has spent a fortnight proving him right.
On October 4, in Brighton, the Green Party of England and Wales adopted a “Zionism is Racism” motion by 1,022 votes to 813. The party now “declares itself to be an anti-Zionist party,” resolves that Zionism “will be treated as any other form of racism,” and calls for “a single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine.”
An amendment to protect members of synagogues that identify as Zionist was defeated, 1,026 to 684. Outside, supporters chanted: “Say it loud, say it clear, Zionists are not welcome here.”
The motion’s brochure is franker still. It invokes “struggling by all available means, including armed struggle,” and asserts: “Only racists, genocidaires and supporters of apartheid can argue (and kill) for the continuation of Zionism.”
The lead author’s signed text ends with “Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!” – repeated on the endorsements page. The river is the Jordan, the sea the Mediterranean; between them lies Israel, which the slogan erases.
Zionism is nothing other than the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in the land where it became a people. By a grim twist of fate, the very same tireless champions of the right of return and of self-determination for every people deny both to the Jews alone.
And the “racism” Brighton denounces has a face: according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, 64% of British Jews identify as Zionists. The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council called the motion “an attack on the Jewish community” and answered in three words: “Zionism is anti-racism.”
Brighton is no island. That same weekend, the Royal College of Nursing cut ties with Teva UK, the Israeli drugmaker’s subsidiary, after a Nurses for Palestine campaign.
Days earlier, The Sunday Times revealed Britain had granted asylum, then citizenship, to a former bodyguard of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh – accused by German prosecutors of helping prepare attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe.
A former Hamas bodyguard naturalized, an Israeli company shown the door, Zionism outlawed: each decision has its principle, and none is in the wrong.
Green Europe refused to follow. The European Green Party said: “As EGP we unequivocally distance ourselves from it” – while lambasting Israel’s government. German Greens co-leader Felix Banaszak called the motion “intolerable and unacceptable.” At home, a councillor, a former opposition leader in Richmond, and Amnesty International UK’s board chair have quit the party.
The J50, a forum of Diaspora Jewish leaders convened by Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, which declared in September that “Zionism is part of Jewish identity,” is working to keep the other Green parties apart from Brighton. Its aim is plain: Brighton must stand alone.
Israel has answered the Labour government – not Brighton. On October 8, Sa’ar confirmed the four measures announced on September 8 were implemented: British representatives removed from the International Gaza Support Center in Kiryat Gat; British training of Palestinian Authority forces in Judea and Samaria terminated; 12 British elected officials and other Britons involved in antisemitic and anti-Israel activity denied entry; and the British Consulate in Jerusalem closed, its sign taken down.
'Labour Government brought us here'
London is saving face: Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband says the building “will be known as the UK Mission, Jerusalem,” its staff only “temporarily withdrawn,” and pledges no “reciprocal action while such discussions are underway and credible.” The consul general and 19 diplomats are leaving all the same.
“We did not want to reach this point,” Sa’ar said, “but the actions of the UK Labour Government brought us here.”
Since July 2024, that government has recognized a virtual “Palestinian state,” restored UNRWA funding, suspended defense export licenses and free trade talks, sanctioned Israeli ministers, frozen military dialogue, kept IDF officers out of the Royal College of Defence Studies and, lately, imposed far-reaching sanctions on Judea and Samaria’s communities, amid accusations of “ethnic cleansing.”
Israel does not confuse a government with a nation. Sa’ar stressed that relations with Britain “are important and have repeatedly proven their value also in protecting the lives and interests of British citizens” – most recently with vital information in the RAF Fairford affair. Yet he warns: “any country that acts against Israel must know that there will be a price for doing so. … Israel will no longer turn its cheek to diplomatic attacks against it.”
That is how duplicity is sanctioned: not with invective, but with measured acts of state. The rest must follow – politically, at the ballot box; legally, wherever British equality and nationality law offers a foothold.
The self-determination of peoples is enshrined in Article 1 of the UN Charter; Britain’s Greens grant it to every people but one. Denying to Jews alone what is granted to everyone else has a precise legal name. That name is not “Zionism.” It is “discrimination.”
Shaw’s Englishman is never in the wrong. This time, he is simply wrong in law.
The writer is a Portugal- and Israel-based French entrepreneur, legal adviser, and expert in crypto assets, information security, and computer warfare. A former lecturer at the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense Nationale (IHEDN) on influence operations, he has participated in French parliamentary missions on economic intelligence and advised on digital threats facing France and European institutions. He regularly comments on French foreign policy and Middle East affairs.