The Green Party has put the conversation back on track: the problem is not the lack of creative solutions to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The problem is Zionism itself.
To appreciate the significance of Motion A105, adopted by the Green Party of England and Wales on Oct. 4, consider its basic tenets.
The party is now formally anti-Zionist. It endorses the Palestinian right of return, supports one democratic state throughout historic Palestine, reaffirms its commitment to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, distinguishes anti-Zionism from antisemitism, and calls for a full arms embargo against Israel.
Though the decision may seem revolutionary within British politics, it is hardly revolutionary when examined against the history of Palestinian dispossession, which began long before the Nakba of 1948.
Indeed, the Greens are not the first to equate Zionism with racism. That history owes much to Africa’s anticolonial movements and their struggle against apartheid.
Ideas once dismissed as radical are increasingly challenging the boundaries of mainstream British politics
Dr. Ramzy Baroud
In 1975, the Organization of African Unity, meeting in Kampala, Uganda, drew explicit parallels between the racial systems governing South Africa, Zimbabwe and occupied Palestine, identifying their common imperialist origins. This position helped lay the groundwork for UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted on Nov. 10, 1975, which determined that Zionism was a form of racism and racial discrimination. Under intense American and Israeli diplomatic pressure, the UN eventually reversed that determination in 1991.
Israel, however, was not required to dismantle the discriminatory structures that had prompted the original condemnation. The revocation changed the UN’s position, not the realities confronting Palestinians.
Those who yielded to American pressure in 1991 must therefore confront a troubling question of moral responsibility: Did their decision help legitimize the political structures that have sustained Palestinian dispossession, occupation and settler colonialism?
The Greens have now reopened that historical debate. But they have also done something more consequential. By adopting the motion with 1,022 votes in favor and 813 against, party members demonstrated that ideas once dismissed as radical are increasingly challenging the boundaries of mainstream British politics.
Yet within this achievement lie important fault lines, revealing the nature of the struggle ahead. Four of the party’s five MPs opposed the resolution. More tellingly, Sandy Ruthven, chair of Amnesty International UK’s charitable trust, resigned his Green Party membership altogether.
In explaining his decision, Ruthven accused the party of seeking to court the hard-left vote while failing to confront prejudice within its own ranks. His resignation exposes a contradiction worth examining, particularly given his association with an organization that has already documented Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians.
Due to the genocide in Gaza, the Greens have effectively declared that the time for carefully managed criticism has passed
Dr. Ramzy Baroud
In February 2022, Amnesty International published a landmark report concluding that Israel maintained an institutionalized system of oppression and domination over Palestinians that amounted to apartheid. That recognition was belated but critically important. Apartheid, however, does not emerge in an ideological vacuum. It is sustained by political assumptions about belonging, sovereignty, demographic control and the unequal distribution of rights.
The question, therefore, is not merely whether Israeli apartheid exists but what political principles made its establishment and perpetuation possible.
The Zionist movement emerged in late 19th-century Europe as a nationalist project seeking a Jewish homeland, eventually pursuing Jewish statehood in Palestine. Its implementation ultimately led to the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948.
The connection between that foundational project and the discriminatory structures documented by Amnesty is impossible to ignore. How, then, can the likes of Ruthven condemn apartheid without confronting the ideology that underpins it? And if that ideology is not Zionism, what is it?
The larger issue, however, is not a lack of historical knowledge among Britain’s political and intellectual elites. Rather, these elites have long positioned themselves as guardians of the permissible discourse on Israel and Palestine — a narrative that accommodates occasional criticism, sometimes even harsh condemnation, but rarely permits a fundamental challenge to the political structures themselves.
The Green Party’s grassroots have now challenged that conventional wisdom. They have crossed the boundary separating what may be criticized from what must remain politically untouchable. Due to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, the Greens have effectively declared that the time for carefully managed criticism has passed.
In doing so, they have opened a political space that others may eventually occupy, including the Labour Party, which is divided between its historically progressive grassroots and an increasingly centrist leadership whose policies, particularly on Palestine, have become virtually indistinguishable from those of the political right.
The vote could also encourage similar debates across Europe, challenging political parties to confront the relationship between Zionism, antisemitism, Palestinian rights and the future of historic Palestine.
But perhaps the Greens’ most consequential contribution is that they have challenged the very premise of the debate. For decades, international diplomacy has focused overwhelmingly on finding solutions while leaving the ideological foundations of the existing political order largely unexamined.
The Greens have reversed that approach, essentially declaring that no political solution in Palestine, however idealistic or supposedly pragmatic, can coexist with Zionism.
The backlash against the Greens was, of course, expected. But so too is the growing determination of British voters to challenge the boundaries of permissible debate across the political spectrum. This could finally open the way for a serious conversation about how the world can hold Israel accountable.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. His latest book, “Before the Flood,” was published by Seven Stories Press. His website is ramzybaroud.net. X: @RamzyBaroud
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappe, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.” His other books include “My Father was a Freedom Fighter” and “The Last Earth.” He is a nonresident senior research fellow at the